


i will implode with you ('cause i know we'll be all right)

by strangetowns



Series: stupid words i haven't said [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety, Drunken Sexual Situations, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-07-18 04:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7299229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“’Swawesome, bro,” Ransom says, reaching out with his fist. It doesn’t take much thought to knock your knuckles against his, which for some reason feels like some sort of weird foreshadowing. “Adam Birkholtz, eh? We were totally meant to be together, apparently.”</p><p>“I never doubted it for a single second,” you say with a grin, and he laughs and knocks your shoulders together, and it’s not like you’ve ever felt like you were missing anything before, but goddamn, in that moment you know what it’s like, for once, to actually <i>find</i> something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Also known as: Just Bros Being Bros i.e. baby don’t hurt me i.e. so I might be a little in love with you but it’s fine, everything is fine, and I am really fucking chill about it I promise (or – Justin Oluransi has a nice smile, and Adam Birkholtz has absolutely no chill.)
> 
> I would just like to state, for the record, that this fic was a complete accident. I was not going to write it, and then my brain thought "what would happen if I wrote, like, an actual traditional soulmates AU?" and subsequently thought "just bros being bros", and what was supposed to be a short and quick writing exercise that would never see the light of day spiraled quickly out of my control into this. You know, as they do. I still have no idea what's going on. 
> 
> This fic is designed to be stand-alone from the previous fic in this verse, and hopefully it works that way. Updates will be posted as I finish editing them. Let's hope this time around there won't be horrific delays between them.
> 
> Thank you muchly to my betas [Crystal](http://niuniujiaojiao.tumblr.com/) and [Lydia](http://boxesfullofthoughts.tumblr.com/). Title of the fic is from Built by Snow's "[Implode Alright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUbGQxXV7VU)".

**I.**

When you meet Ransom for the first time, you notice the presence of your name on his wrist about ten seconds before you exchange your first words.

You’ve made peace with the fact that your name is a dude’s long ago, the long and arduous process starting from the moment you turned thirteen and the letters etched themselves on your arm before you could so much as notice that something had changed. High school was a mess of a sexuality and general identity crisis and juniors was a hotbed of repression, but coming to Samwell now you’re a bit older and more sure of yourself, and you’re reasonably certain you’ve gotten at least some things in terms of labels figured out. Still, as it turns out, knowing that one’s soulmate is of the same gender doesn’t actually prep one much for meeting said soulmate. When you encounter yours head-on, this huge defenseman you only have two inches on (which, like, not to tout your own horn, but that is _really_ saying something) with a close-shaven skull and quite possibly the sharpest cheekbones you’ve ever seen in your life, you are – justifiably, you feel – utterly bamboozled.

“Adam Birkholtz,” you say, for lack of anything better.

“Justin Oluransi,” he answers. It’s a name you’ve spent years of your life memorizing, whispering it to yourself in an attempt to feel out the syllables, running your fingers over the letters on your wrist and wondering when this boy would come into your life or if he ever would. That first time he says his name for you blows all the times you ever stumbled over it clumsily with your clumsy tongue and your stupid clumsy mouth out of the fucking water. It’s a beautiful name, you decide in that moment, beautiful when he says it, and when he does something sort of just shifts into place, something invisible and small and profound.

Then one of your other teammates (Shitty?) sails on past and says the words that will forever seal your fate – “Haha, we should call you Ransom and Holster” – and the ice, pardon the pun, melts almost instantaneously.

“’Swawesome, bro,” Ransom says, reaching out with his fist. It doesn’t take much thought to knock your knuckles against his, which for some reason feels like some sort of weird foreshadowing. “Adam Birkholtz, eh? We were totally meant to be together, apparently.”

Holy hell, the way he says your name sounds better, too. Now, that’s just unfair.

“I never doubted it for a single second,” you say with a grin, and he laughs and knocks your shoulders together, and it’s not like you’ve ever felt like you were missing anything before, but goddamn, in that moment you know what it’s like, for once, to actually _find_ something.

-

A week or so after you first meet (to be honest, you’re not really sure; you’ve always been kind of terrible with dates) you sit down to have the Soulmate Talk. You feel like if Soulmates 101 was a thing, the Soulmate Talk should be the very first lesson – taking the time to discuss what you mean to each other, where you want to take it, what boundaries to set, etc. etc. It is a trope that is sorely lacking in the movies. Usually they just skip to the making out.

(As far as you know, romantic love, even soulmate love, never happens that fast. Of course, it’s always possible you’re missing out on something, but you feel like it should kind of be a given that even soulmate romantic love takes work.)

“Yeah, okay,” Ransom starts out. “So like we’re bros, right?”

You nod. “Total bros.”

“Let’s see, in the last week, we have…” He starts counting things on his fingers. “Gotten each other coffee, texted each other three hundred and forty seven times – roughly, by my last count – made up, like, ten billion of the most amazing inside jokes in the history of ever – “

“I mean, probably actually the most stupid, but – “

“And,” he continues, undeterred, “are shaping up to be _the_ best d-men this school has ever motherfucking seen.”

“You’re missing the fact that I’ve somehow become your personal alarm clock?” you say. “Which, like, is fine, but also, I do live all the way on the other end of the hall from you.”

“I’m a heavy-duty sleeper, okay, that’s not my fault.” He exhales. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is… You think we could be…” He hesitates. “Best bros?”

You almost have to laugh at that. Shit, you’ve never heard anyone get that nervous about asking to be _friends_ before. But you’re glad he did, because honestly this is kind of what you need. You don’t remember the last time you took a real stab at bonafide romance, the last time you really wanted to. And you want to be friends with this guy. You can already picture lazy afternoons playing video games or marathoning movies with him, study dates and coffee dates and hanging out without the obligation to be anything else than who you are. That’s all you want, really, just someone who has your back. That’s pretty much all you’ve ever wanted.

“Bro,” you say. “Thought you’d never ask.”

He smiles. “Cool. So, like, this soulmate business is totally platonic, right? I mean, not that I don’t think you’re super hot, bro, don’t think I’m trying to knock you down, but, like, you’re such a _bro_.”

“No lie, dude, I was just about to say the same exact thing.” Not that being romantically involved with another guy is totally out of the realm of possibility for you, but somehow, sitting here a comfortable distance away from Ransom, you can’t exactly imagine yourself ever feeling inclined to mack on him. He’s already one of the broest bros you’ve ever met.

“Great.” He straight up grins, then. It’s a little beautiful. Heart-warming, even. “Platonic life partners for life?”

“Hell yeah,” you say. You even shake on it. It’s practically official.

-

And half a week after that, you have your next important conversation with Ransom.

“So,” you say (no preamble planned, just going straight for the jugular), hands curling around your beer, “I’m bi. Seeing as we’re soulmates and all, that’s probably a good thing for you to know.”

His eyes widen. “No way!”

“What do you mean, _no way_?” you say immediately, ready to start a fight. Like, he’s your soulmate, sure, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be a total dickhead, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t –

He shakes his head and smiles, which kind of stops you in your tracks. “Sorry, I mean, I’m bi too!”

You stare at him. “No fucking way.”

He throws his head back and laughs. It’s a nice look on him, eyes squeezed shut with the force of his own laughter and corners of his mouth crinkling. You like seeing him this open, you decide, this free and this happy. You decide if you’re going to be his best bro, well, the least you could do is make sure as shit this happens as often as possible.

“This is too great,” he says finally, when he’s calmed down enough to choke out actual words. “First I meet this total bro and he just happens to be one of the coolest fucking people I’ve ever met, and then it just so happens that we’re both _bi_? I mean, shit, man, you know how much easier being wingmen just got? Our dating pool is practically, like, _everyone_.”

“Only the hot people,” you say sagely.

“Hot people for hot bros.” He knocks his shoulder against yours. “Fuckin’ _A_ , man.”

You grin at him and hold up your hand. “I feel like this occasion calls for the sickest high five in all of high five history.”

He grins back, his face splitting wide open. “Bi-five,” he declares.

“That,” you say, “is the best fucking thing I’ve heard in my whole motherfucking life.”

“Damn right,” he says, and you proceed to have the sickest goddamn bi-five the world has literally ever seen. That shit is going to be in history books, a hundred years in the future. You’ll be mad if it isn’t.

(As far as important conversations go, you figure, you are on a fucking _roll_.)

-

It takes an embarrassingly short amount of time before you morph from two separate entities into one cohesive unit.

They try to chirp you about it at hockey practice, Shitty especially. As it turns out, it doesn’t really work well at all.

“So have you moved in together yet?” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. “Where’s the U-haul?”

“Don’t need it,” you say. “All we need – “

“ – Is each other!” Ransom says, skating up next to you from out of nowhere.

“Holy hell.” You wipe a fake tear from the corner of your eye. “That’s what I was gonna say.”

“Hell fucking _yeah_ , it was.” He grins brightly at you. “Bi-five.”

“Bi-fucking-five,” you say, and bi-five him with grace.

Shitty shakes his head. “Hopeless,” he mutters. “Motherfucking hopeless.”

“Best believe it,” you shout after him as he skates away. “I’m taking that as a compliment.”

“As you well should,” Ransom says. You bi-five again, and it’s nothing short of glorious.

-

“Bro. Come on, dude. Wake up.”

Ransom groans and pulls a pillow over his head. He otherwise does not move.

“Bro, don’t do this to me,” you say, shaking his shoulder. “I don’t even have class for another two hours.”

He pointedly turns his back to you.

Welp. You tried to be reasonable.

Unceremoniously, you roll up your sleeves, crack your knuckles, and pick him up from the bed, bridal style.

“Wahhhh!” Immediately (and predictably) he starts flailing in your arms. Which doesn’t exactly make your job easier, considering the guy is almost as big as you are. Still, you keep a grip on him until he’s calm enough to blink his eyes open at you and say, voice rough with sleep, “Holster?”

“The one and only,” you say, and dump him back on his bed.

“Fucking _hell_.” He groans and drags his hands over his face. “Why did I decide getting you to wake me up was a good idea.”

“First of all,” you say matter-of-factly, “you asked me, so, like, verbal consent and all that. Second, you gave me express permission to use whatever means necessary. ‘Whatever it takes, Holtzy, I can’t be late to my eight AM again oh my god please’. That is an exact quote.”

He squints at you. “Yo, sorry about that, by the way.”

You raise your eyebrows at him. “For what?”

“I know your class is at ten, and this isn’t exactly the most convenient of arrangements – “

“Nah, man.” You wave your hand dismissively. “It’s worth it if only for the expression on your face. I wish I’d thought to take a picture.”

“Still. I should make it up to you, somehow. Or. Something.” He groans again. “I feel like I shouldn’t be alive right now, oh my god.”

“That’s what you get for signing up for an eight AM, bro. Could have told you upfront it was a bad idea.” You shrug. “Nah, man, don’t need an exchange system or anything. I’m happy to do it.”

“You sure?”

“Of course.” You tilt your head. “Platonic life partners for life, yeah? I got your back, even for stupid shit like this. You got mine, right?”

“Wasn’t even in question,” he says. He wiggles around in bed, presumably so he can actually get up, and promptly rolls off the edge of the bed to land flat on his face. It makes your whole day, week, and possibly month.

(You definitely remember to take a picture this time.)

-

It only takes a handful of weeks, maybe a month and a half or so, before you feel comfortable enough to barge into his room without knocking.

“Dude,” he says, not bothering to look up from his book, “have you ever heard of knocking?”

“Bro, please.” You drop your bag to the floor with a heavy sigh. “Like you could be doing anything that would surprise me at this point.”

His eyes flicker up at you, then, and they flash with concern. Figures, you think. Your tone must be off. You’ve never been good at controlling what your voice does at the best of times.

“Holster,” he says, “are you okay?”

Yup, you briefly consider answering with. Absolutely. You are doing fucking _peachy._

Instead, you let your face tell it all.

“Shit, man.” He sets his book aside and opens his arms invitingly. “Come here.”

You stare at him. “Dude.”

“What? There’s not a single emotional problem that can’t be helped with cuddling.” He shrugs. “Unless you don’t want to.”

Nah, you definitely want to.

Wordlessly, you make your way over to the bed and climb into his arms (well, ‘climbing’ being an operative term; it’s probably more akin to ‘crashing’, or ‘falling’, or ‘sinking’, something dramatic like that). They tighten over your back reassuringly. Somehow, your face finds its way into the crook of his shoulder, and your fists ball up in the fabric of his shirt, and you don’t hold him so much as you _cling_.

“Today,” you say into the skin of his neck, voice muffled, “was absolutely, positively shit-tastic.”

“I hear you, bro.” Tentatively, his fingers find their way to the hair at the base of your skull, stroking gently. With each touch, you can feel the tension slowly ebb out of your shoulders, like a receding tide. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

You do. It’s a relief, somehow, to let all your frustrations flow out of you, everything from the petty to the serious, and to let him be there to catch you when you fall. Almost as easy as breathing, or just being.

-

Ransom bursts into your room suddenly, loudly, and with a vengeance.

“I can’t find my graphing calculator. Why can’t I find my fucking graphing calculator?!”

You glance up from your laptop. He drags his hands across his face and over his skull agitatedly, eyes all bugged out and looking properly on the way to a full-blown meltdown. Is it exams week already? Damn. That was fast.

“Bro. Ransom, my man.” You nod toward your desk. “You let me borrow it last night. Thanks, by the way. That thing makes some sweet parabolas.”

“Like hell you used it for parabolas.” Grumpily, he snatches the calculator off your desk, but you can tell, like some sort of sixth sense (like Spidey senses, but for Ransom – Ransy senses?), that he’s already feeling better. Being that it’s exam week, you doubt there’s a real shot in hell he’ll ever actually calm down, but then again, this is Ransom. Dealing with the boy’s emotions are the closest thing to riding a roller coaster without actually getting on one.

“The fuck else would I use it for?”

He raises his eyebrows at you. “Drawing dicks?”

“Listen,” you say, holding your hands up, “I don’t know why I’d use a calculator for that for when I have a perfectly serviceable pencil right here – “

“ _Whomp_ , there it is.” He holds the screen up and grins the most shit-eating grin you’ve ever seen. “Busted.”

“I don’t know why you’re acting like you just caught me red-handed when it’s _your_ calculator,” you point out. “Your shit, your loss.”

He throws his middle finger up at you unconcernedly, already moving past the incident with startling efficiency. “Can I just hire you to remember what I do with my crap for me? Like a professional stuff-finder?”

You snort. “I only know where your things are because I know you so well.”

“ _Exactly_. Which is why it’d be perfect.” He gnaws at his bottom lip. You kind of wish he’d stop doing that, even though you know habits and ticks are hard to shake off. It just worries you that he might hurt himself in the midst of heightened stress, which is already a dangerous time for him without the threat of bodily harm (minor as a fucked up bottom lip would be, in the grand scheme of things). “I can’t believe it’s only been a couple months.”

You blink at him, mildly surprised. You suppose it is kind of incredible that your rapport has gotten to this level in such a short amount of time. You didn’t think Ransom was the kind of person to actually think about that kind of thing, though, let alone worry about it.

“Yeah, well, I mean, it’s not a big deal, is it?” you say, pushing your glasses up your nose. “This is kinda what happens when you find your soulmate.”

“Yeah.” He sits next to you and plops his legs in your lap without hesitation. “I guess I just wasn’t prepared for how _easy_ it was going to be.”

You suppose you get what he means. When all you have is a name on your wrist to tell you what kind of future you’re going to have, it’s impossible to imagine what’ll actually happen when you find them, if you actually find them at all. All the stories ramp up your expectations, of course, but that somehow makes it worse. In a way, the idea that a soulmate connection could actually exist has been, for you, almost totally foreign. Most people only get one shot at it, after all. Once you’ve found your person, that’s it; the system doesn’t give you anyone else. And you’ve heard just as many horror stories as you’ve heard good ones.

Of course, you’ve also heard enough of Shitty’s rants to know that a soulmate isn’t the end-all be-all of love. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that you don’t actually have any experience with having (and being) a soulmate before Ransom. Dating? Friendships? Sex, even? Sure, there’s been plenty of that. But though having a soulmate isn’t better or worse than any other kind of love, it _has_ been a different experience for you, and that’s certainly something worth noting.

You and Ransom? Weird is just not a _thing_ between you (which might actually be the weirdest thing about it). You communicate so well with each other it’s practically like reading minds, except with actual effort put in and possibly more cuddling involved (though real talk, if mind reading really doesn’t include cuddling you definitely never want to mysteriously acquire telepathy). And yeah, he’s right. Talking to each other is effortless, in a way. Knowing how to talk to him, at this point, feels almost as innate as knowing what it’s like to breathe.

(And you don’t think it’s ever happened this quickly with any other relationship you’ve ever had.)

“Bro, you calling me easy?” you say. “Because that’s just fucking _rude_.”

He coughs out a laugh. “Course not, dude. I’m just saying. It’s almost like we’ve known each other our whole lives, or something. Isn’t that crazy?”

It is, a little. It also feels kind of right, in a way.

“Well, I’m not about to complain,” you say. “I couldn’t ask for anything better than a bro who’s agreed to do stupid shit with me for the rest of time. Like make bi puns. And get schwasted every other day.”

“You say ‘stupid’. I say ‘refined’.”

You shrug. “Apples and oranges.”

He snorts.

“Joking, by the way,” you say, casually. “About the lifelong contract. I know that’s a usual condition of this whole soulmate thing, but like – shit happens, you know? It doesn’t seem right that either of us should feel obligated to stick to those rules if it’s not working.”

His eyes widen. “Bro, are you serious?” He shakes his head and laughs disbelievingly. “Dude, you are – one of the _best_ people I have ever met. Can’t imagine not riding this out until death do us part, you know? Maybe it’ll change down the line, but – nah. This, here? This is a good thing. And I intend to fight for it.”

You have to grin, at that. To be honest you feel the same exact way, but it’s sort of a relief to hear him voice it aloud. To know you really are on the same wavelength.

“You with me, bro?” he says, and holds out his fist. His smile is crooked and self-assured, like he already knows how this is going to play out. In a way, you do too.

You knock your knuckles against his. It’s easy, just as easy as the first time you bumped fists, maybe even easier.

“Yeah, man,” you say. “Got your back.”

And, weirdly enough, that’s easy, too.

(It was half a lie, really, when you said you’d been joking. Meeting Ransom is pretty much the best thing that has ever happened to you. You don’t think you could ever joke about that.)


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

In general, life at Samwell is, pardon your French, motherfucking bitchingly awesome.

Hockey is amazing. Actual school stuff is okay, nothing you can’t take. You’ve found your soulmate, who just so happens to be the smartest, coolest, funniest person you know and who you also happen to jive so well with you might as well be drift compatible. And you’re not, for a single moment, awkward around him. You’ve never even had a single fight.

(If you tell people that, though, they either don’t believe you, or they straight up tell you they think that’s strange. You, personally, have always been confused by that. First of all, who is anyone to know what your relationship with your best bro should be like, and second, why is it considered normal and healthy communication to fight with the people you care about?  Like, aren’t there better, much more productive ways to work through disagreements? Or is that just you?)

Your sophomore year, you and Ransom move into the attic of the Haus. Living together with your soulmate is even better than you could have imagined. It means you can wake him up without having to leave the comfort of your own bed. It means you can conglomerate your video game collections into one giant pile and not really have to give a shit about whose copy of Mario Kart is whose. It means you don’t have to walk anywhere or do basically anything on your own, if you don’t want to. Shit, man, it means _so many fucking things_. The possibilities are endless.

(Somewhere along the line – your perfectly synchronized morning routines, maybe? The coffee that’s always left on your desk those rare times Ransom wakes up before you? Or somewhere among the chaotically imperfect spread of your room, no inch fully yours or his? – you realize you kind of don’t want to stop living with him, if that’s a possibility. Shit happens, of course, and maybe it’ll be different in the future, but right now, in this moment, it still feels like a pretty significant thing to admit.)

-

You can’t decide if you’re that good at Mario Kart, or if Ransom is really that bad.

“Jesus christ, dude,” you say the tenth time you get first place.

He scowls. “I’m telling you, I’m just not used to game cube controllers. I would kick your damn ass if we were playing Mario Kart Wii.”

You start a new round. “Okay, but everyone knows Mario Kart Wii is literally the worst version of Mario Kart there is.”

“Blasphemy!” he gasps.

“Just telling it like it is.” Your first item is a red shell, and you waste no time in using it. It hits Ransom squarely in his rear end, and you sail effortlessly past him. “Sorry, man. Actually, I’m totally not.”

“I feel so persecuted right now,” he moans.

“Not my problem.”

“Aha! Eat my ass _and_ my blue shell, you fucker!”

You slow down just enough to catch him in the crossfire. “You were saying?”

“Argh!” He pouts at you. It’s kind of adorable. Also kind of really fucking sad. “Do I have to ask for a pity-victory at this point?”

“You can try,” you deadpan.

He snorts and turns his attention back to the game. His arm and leg press against yours, warm and solid and dependable. Seems like you can always depend on him to be close to you, these days.

“Asshole,” he says.

“Son of a bitch,” you return, and grin.

-

“Holster.”

“Mmph.”

“Holster!”

“What the fresh fucking fuck do you want,” you mumble into your pillow. You’re not usually so disgruntled with him, but for fuck’s sake, it is currently ass o’ clock after midnight and you have an exam tomorrow morning. This is _not the motherfucking time._

“I think something just touched me and I don’t know what it was.” Ransom’s whisper is unexpectedly shaky. Your grumpiness, irritatingly, melts into pity.

“Yeah?” you sigh.

“Yeah, man.” A pause. “I’m scared.”

“’Kay.” You roll toward the wall and move over as much as you can. “Come on, dude.”

“… You sure?”

“Yeah. Now come on, before I change my mind. Which, may I remind you, it is _ass o’ clock_ right now.”

“Okay, okay.” He drops into your bed, springs creaking pathetically under your combined weight. You almost feel sorry for them. “Thanks, bro,” he says, knocking his elbow lightly against your back.

“Yeah, okay.”

“No, really, I mean it.”

“Okay. Sleep now, please.”

A moment of silence. Then another. You can hear his breathing, and it’s steady. Good. You slowly let yourself relax.

“… Do you think it was a ghost? I mean, ghosts aren’t real, obviously, but just, like, say, hypothetically, that they were. Do you think it was a ghost?”

(It figures, of course, that you managed to land yourself a soulmate slash roommate who simultaneously has extreme difficulty falling asleep and extreme difficulty waking up in the morning. How could it possibly be any other way?)

“Rans,” you say slowly, “I love you, bro, okay? But if you don’t shut the fuck up, I will eviscerate you.”

“Aw, you love me?” He sounds rather touched, which would be endearing if it weren’t for the fact that the act of him speaking just caused you to briefly entertain murdering him in about fifteen different ways.

“For the love of fucking _god_.”

“Got it, got it. Sorry.”

It’s quiet, again. You pull the covers tightly around your shoulders. This is nice, actually, now that it’s quiet. A lot warmer with another person in your bed, and even a lot more comforting. You don’t mind it so much.

“But honestly, what if this attic was haunted?”

“ _RANS._ ”

-

(After that, he’s not so shy about asking you to sleep in the same bed with you, when he needs it. There’s usually some excuse – a bad dream, or a particularly nasty case of test anxiety. You almost wish you could tell him you don’t need them, but you know why he tells them to you, why it’s important to him to explain himself, so you just draw the covers up over the both of you, and you let him take some of your warmth, your strength. It doesn’t take very long, just like with any other aspect of your relationship, for this to become an inevitability, too.)

-

“So theoretically,” he says in the attic, one afternoon after what you assume is a particularly grueling orgo chem exam (if the haunted and empty look in his eyes is anything to go by, anyway), “I could have totally and completely failed, in which case I will probably drop out of college after inevitably failing this class and all my others thanks to my subsequent meltdown, in which case I will be forced to live on the streets and die alone. Or I could actually have done decently, in which case the results will be so overwhelming I will literally have a heart attack. Either way, I’m going to die.”

“Bro,” you say, not looking up from your laptop, “I’m legitimately offended you would insinuate that you’d die alone. Like, what am I, a desk lamp?”

“Damn. Guess you’re right. Well, unless you die first – “

“ _Bro_. Too busy to have a crisis over the possibility of dying right now.”

“Busy? But you don’t have any – “ He comes over to the bed to get a better look at your screen. “You cannot seriously be watching _The Notebook_ right now.”

“Totally, one hundred percent serious.”

“This has to be, like, the sixth time. This semester.”

“Eighth,” you correct. “Watch with me?”

He sighs a long-suffering sigh. “But I’d blocked off all of tonight for ‘nervous breakdown over tomorrow’s cell bio test’.”

“Okay, listen, after an exam like today’s? You need a break, dude. You can resume your regularly scheduled freak-outs after.” You scoot over and pat the space next to you. “I’m just about to get to the part where Ryan Gosling builds the house and it’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to either of us.”

“Fine.” He throws his bag into a chair and sinks into your side. Almost instinctively, your arm comes up around him, your hand resting on his ribcage. “Only if you don’t cry, though. I like this shirt.”

You squeeze him, gently. “That is an utterly unfair accusation and I am offended you would even think about making it.”

“Whatever, dude, we both know you’re embarrassing about this movie.”

“What, a man can’t get emotional over Ryan Gosling’s stupidly gorgeous face? Or Rachel McAdams’, for that matter.”

“Listen, dude,” he says with a pointed look. “This is _The_ _Notebook_ we’re talking about.”

“I don’t see what you’re trying to say except you just named one of the greatest cinematic masterpieces of our time,” you sniff.

“Overly sentimental, more like.”

“Well, maybe I’m a sentimental guy, did you ever consider that, Rans? _Did you_?”

He snorts and presses himself closer, letting his head drop so that it rests on your shoulder, and sighs again. It sounds almost content, that sigh. Relaxed. Nice sound.

“Thanks, man,” he says, quietly. “Mean it.”

(It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it, how you don’t have to ask what it is he means?)

You let your head knock lightly against his, temples pressing warmly together. This is what you live for, you think. These moments of quiet, stress and tension and general all-around shitty feeling slowly leaking out of the two of you into silence. For just an hour, you can pretend the outside world doesn’t exist, and you can do it with him. Don’t need much more than that.

(Turns out you do cry at the end, as you always do. Ransom doesn’t even complain this time – a first.)

-

“Hey, dude,” Ransom says, rummaging around his drawers. “Have you seen my – “

“Canada boxers?” you say, eyes on your textbook. “Yeah, somehow it got stuck in my laundry pile. It’s on your bunk, I folded it and everything. Why the hell do you have boxers that have maple leaves printed across the ass cheeks, anyway?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”

You sigh, conceding. “Your ass does look great in those boxers. Even if your dignity doesn’t.”

“I take offense to that.” He moves over to the bunk beds, snatching the boxers from his mattress with a satisfied grin. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

“You know,” you say thoughtfully, “I’d make a damn good housewife.”

“Dude, we’re not married,” he says, grabbing his towel and slinging it over his shoulder.

 “Bro. We’re a little married.”

“Okay, granted.” He hums to himself. “You seem busy. You need me to get anything for you, while I’m down there? I could make you some coffee.”

“Holy hell, that would be ‘ _swawesome_.” You grin at him. “You’re the best hockey husband.”

“You bet your fine ass I am,” he says, and actually has the audacity to wink.

“Shoo, motherfucker,” you say, waving your hand. “Shower fast so I can get my coffee.”

“So that’s all I am to you,” he says, pressing his hand to his chest dramatically. “Your coffee boy.” Before you can respond, denial and profuse reassurances that he is so much more than that ready on your tongue, he leaves, one last smirk tossed over his shoulder before the door closes behind him.

He is, though. You know that he knows, but it seems important to inform him of it anyway. He’s more than someone you just ask for favors, because he _understands_ you. That’s about the most you could ever ask for, from anyone.

You glance back down at your textbook. Thinking about how much you care about Ransom, as important a pastime as it is, is distracting, and you have a quiz tomorrow you’re pretty much royally fucked for. Distractions right now are entirely not welcome.

-

You are not sure what you did to deserve Eric R. Bittle, but like fuck you’re going to complain.

“Marry me, Bitty,” you groan the first time you bite into his quiche. Is this heaven, or is this hell? Either way, you have almost certainly transcended the plane of mortal existence.

Ransom throws a napkin at you. “Bro, you are _not_ thinking about cheating on me over a piece of _quiche_. Hand it over.” He shovels a respectable amount of quiche into his mouth, and his eyes widen. “Marry me, Bitty.”

You smirk at him, smug. “You were saying?”

Bitty tosses a laugh over his shoulder from the sink. “Now, now, boys, there’s enough to go around for everyone.” He smiles down at his hands. “Y’all are sweet together.”

“Hell yes.” You sling a careless arm over Ransom’s shoulders and grin at him. “We’re like candy. Like Hershey’s.”

“Bro, I am _so much better_ than Hershey’s,” Ransom says, wounded. “I’m at least a Reese’s, easily.”

“Reese’s are _not_ better than Hershey’s.”

“Fuck you, Holster.”

Bitty laughs again. “It’s like you’re an old married couple.”

“That,” you say, “is definitely a compliment.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Basically since the day we met,” Ransom says proudly. “Was always meant to fuckin’ be.”

“That’s so lovely.” Bitty sighs, almost wistfully. “Y’all are, like, _textbook_ soulmate boyfriends.”

Something freezes in the air, for a second.

“Uh – “ you start.

“We’re not boyfriends,” Ransom cuts in quickly, glancing at you briefly. He almost looks concerned, though you’re not sure why. “We are, in fact, the best of best bros. Textbook platonic soulmates, def.”

“Oh.” Bitty looks stricken. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply – “

“It’s cool,” you say.

(It’s not like this is the first time people have made that mistake. Sort of comes with the territory, growing up in a culture so heavily focused on one kind of soulmate.)

“Just,” Bitty says, “with the names on your wrists, and how _close_ you are – “

“Yeah, Bitty, we get it,” you say, a bit more forcefully than you intended. It’s only slight, so you don’t think Bitty notices, thankfully, but you can just _feel_ Ransom glance at you again.

“Well.” Bitty smiles. “Y’all make wonderful best friends, anyway. It’s a little touching.”

“We aim to touch,” Ransom says, and, with a wicked grin, grabs at your sides. Your reaction to being tickled is sort of akin to a nuclear bomb going off. Thankfully, no one gets hurt, except for your pride.

Later, when you’re walking to class, Ransom laughs softly. “Us, boyfriends. There’s a thought.”

“Perish it,” you say.

“Not a bad one, I guess,” he muses. “Just not accurate.”

You don’t answer. Something feels inexplicably tight in your chest, and the worst part is, you don’t know why. What he just said bothers you, you can tell. Why does it bother you?

“Bro, you okay?” he says, raising his eyebrows at you.

You shrug, shaken out of your stupor. “Just kind of spaced out there, sorry. You’re right, though.”

He smiles and knocks your shoulders together, and doesn’t say anything more.

Must be how weird the idea is. That’s what’s getting you, how completely foreign it is. You haven’t really thought about dating him, or anyone else for that matter, in so many words, and so to think about it, even in such a roundabout manner, is utterly strange. Inconceivable, even. You decide to leave it at that. There’s probably nothing more to it.

(How can there be?)

-

It happens again, that weird feeling, the next time you call home.

Everything’s normal for the first half of it. You ask about Buffalo and your parents and your sisters, and your mother asks you about school and hockey and school. You rattle off the normal responses, smile when you hear your oldest sister is starting to work through her college apps and already has her eyes set on a dream school, are generally content to hear from home.

Then, your mother asks, casually, “So, are you seeing anyone?” And that _feeling_ crawls in your gut, all tingly and strange and slightly nauseating, and you don’t know why. You don’t fucking know why.

“No, not seriously,” you say.

“Really?” She hums tunelessly. “I would have thought, by now…”

“Yeah, mom?” you say, dreading the answer, though you know you shouldn’t, this is your _mom_ , for Christ’s sake.

“Oh, I don’t know. I just assumed, you and Justin have always been so close, _and_ you’re soulmates…” She laughs. “It just seemed obvious you would start dating, eventually.”

“Oh.” You frown. This again. You thought you’d set her straight on that long ago, that soulmates don’t need to be romantic, that what you and Ransom have is perfect the way it is, that it’s never going to change, and you don’t even really want it to…

“I’m sorry, I know it’s silly, and I know what you’ve said in the past,” she says. “I was just a little surprised, is all. The way you two looked at each other, the last time you were here for break – “

“Mom,” you say. You don’t know why it’s important you interrupt her, just that it is.

“Sorry, sorry.” She sighs. “We miss you, Adam. As always.”

“Miss you too, mom.” You smile tightly. Unnecessary because she can’t see it, but still an instinct. “Say hi to dad and the girls for me.”

“Of course, sweetie.”

You hang up feeling oddly tilted, like the world has shifted wrongly on its axis or the ground is off-kilter or something equally ludicrous. And you don’t know why.

(You just don’t fucking know why.)

-

You end up telling Ransom, of course. Why wouldn’t you? He’s always been your go-to for shit like this. You cuddle, limbs tangling together and blankets scissored about your legs, and you talk about your feelings. It’s basically the only way you can deal with them.

“Bro,” he says, leaning into your side close enough for his exhales to brush over your skin. Your arms are around him, or his are around you; you can’t much tell, at this point. “I can’t believe everyone thinks we’re dating.”

“I know,” you say. “It’s fucking stupid.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say that it’s _stupid_ ,” Ransom says. “Like, it’s not totally impossible, theoretically? From the most hypothetical of perspectives, of course.”

You frown at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, just look at it from where they are.” He grabs your wrist and holds it next to his own, so that the name on one bleeds into the other. “Boy meets boy. Boy happens to have a name on his wrist that matches other boy’s. Boy is bi and other boy also happens to be bi. Boy and boy are literally never seen apart again.”

You look down at your touching wrists, nondescript block letters stark against your skin and faded against his, and swallow. “Okay, that is a horrendous misuse of the term ‘literally’.”

“I mean, I’m just saying. It makes sense.” You can feel him shrug, shifting slightly in your grip. “Anyway, it’s not a huge leap to assume we’d want to date each other, from an outside perspective. You are _ridiculously_ attractive. Just saying.”

“Great, this has suddenly become a come-on jerk-off,” you mutter, feeling your cheeks warming for some dumb fucking stupid reason.

“And I am, too,” he finishes. “But it takes more than looks to make romance, yeah? And plus, what we have is good. We don’t need anything else.” He looks at you beseechingly. “Right?”

That, at least, is not uncomfortable for you to admit.

“No,” you say, pressing closer to him and trying to be subtle about it (though let’s be real, you are quite possibly the least subtle human being to ever exist). “We definitely don’t.”

-

Sometimes, you and Ransom organize movie events for the Haus because half the team (read: Jack) are uncultured swines, and collectively the two of you are obligated to help remedy this accursed affliction. Tonight’s movie event is a Princess Bride quote-along. The rules – take turns so everyone has a fair shot at it, take a shot if you miss a line, take two shots every time someone says “As you wish”, and pray you don’t pass out. The stakes – first dibs on Bitty’s pies for a solid week. The contestants – all the residents of the Haus including the elusive Jack Zimmermann (no one knows why he’s here; frankly, he’s probably not even going to try) with guest of honor Eric Bittle.

You got this in the fucking _bag_.

“This movie’s special effects are pretty bad,” Jack comments.

“Shot!” you yell, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “For blaspheming literally the most iconic movie of all time.”

“Shots!” Ransom choruses loudly.

Jack obediently pours himself a shot glass of water. “Does no one else thinks so?”

“Jack, bro, my dude, my guy, my man,” you say. “That’s the fucking _point_.”

He side-eyes you dubiously. “Right. What does ‘as you wish’ mean again?”

The living room collectively groans. Bitty offers a sympathetic, “Oh, _honey_.” You don’t even have the strength to deal right now.

“Oh shit, we’re at the battle of wits,” Ransom says. “I got Vizzini, I got him.”

“Hell yeah you do,” you say affectionately, slinging a careless arm over his shoulders.

He nails his lines, even the maniacal laugh at the end, which he punctuates by collapsing all over you in fake death. Shitty yells, “what a fuckin’ beaut,” and you shout something incredibly witty and intelligent in his ear (something along the lines of “AAAARGH”), and he grins at you, dazzling, sinking into your side with a contented hum. You squeeze his arm, not so much seeing his smile as you are feeling it, and knock your chin lightly against his head. It all takes place in the span of seconds, moving together effortlessly like the tide of oceans. You don’t have to think about it; you never really need to, with him.

-

There are very few times that Ransom holds his alcohol better than you. Tonight is one of those nights.

“I think I had too much to drink,” you groan-shout at him on the way up the stairs. He has one of your arms around his shoulders, and is patiently guiding you up the steps. What a fucking champ. What an all-star.

“Shit, bro, you need the bathroom? We’re just about to pass it.”

“Nah, nah, nah. I’m fine. I’m good. I’m fuckin’ _Gucci_.”

“I think I’d notice if you were fucking Gucci,” Ransom says. “Come on, dude. All right, here we go – “

He kicks the door to the attic open, and the two of you stumble your way to the bunk beds. You get a good look at him in the dimness, bright orange streetlight outside seeping in through the gaps in the blinds. The stripes fall gracefully across his face, painting his skin a dark gold, and from this angle, his eyes are luminous, shining like coins in the light.

“Shit bro,” you say, voice hushed in awe. “Your eyes are fucking _pretty_.” Without thinking much of it (thinking is for losers, or nerd losers, or loser nerds, none of which you are, you’re pretty sure) you lean forward and plant a clumsy kiss on the corner of his eye. There’s nothing more important to you, in this moment, than showing him just how much you appreciate his eyes.

He looks at you, gaze strange and inscrutable. Then he lets you drop onto the bed, and suddenly the most important thing right now is how comfortable this fucking bed is.

“Hold on, bro, let me get you some water,” he says. You squeeze your eyes shut so you can concentrate on his voice better, low and comforting.

“Sounds good, man,” you mumble. “Fucking hell. What is real life anymore?”

He doesn’t move for a few moments. You can tell because his steps don’t creak across the floor, which they would if he was leaving the room, but mostly you can just feel him there, standing in front of you, still as stone and just as quiet.

There’s warmth on the side of your face, then, a certain pressure. A hand, you think stupidly. You can feel fingers curling in the hair around your ear, tugging lightly. A feather-light touch across your cheek, back and forth, rhythmic and slow and sweet. You lean into the touch happily. It feels good. Steady, like an anchor, or a rock.

Then, there’s a sound that sounds a little like a sigh, and the hand withdraws. The floorboards creak under Ransom’s weight, and, seconds later, you can hear the door clicking softly shut. It’s silent, then, and dark, in your head and in the room. Hard to resist the pull of unconsciousness, when there’s so much alcohol in your system and you’re so fucking tired. Hard to think, right now. Hard to do anything but exist.

By the time he comes back, you’re already asleep.

(“You were so schwasted last night, dude,” Ransom says with a laugh the next morning, when you wake up with a hangover that easily makes your list of Top Five Worst Hangovers In Your Life Ever.

“Don’t fucking remind me,” you groan, pressing your face into your pillow. “Please tell me I didn’t do anything embarrassing.”

There’s a pause. Then he laughs again, quietly. “You’re kind of a disaster, Holster,” he says. “Everything you do is embarrassing.”

“I’d drink to that, if I could,” you say miserably. Thank fucking god for Sundays.)

-

“One medium caramel latte and one vanilla frap with extra whipped cream in the largest size you can muster,” you say to the barista behind the counter.

“Both for you?” she says as she rings up your order, raising your eyebrows at you.

You wonder, briefly, if you should try flirting with her. She’s kind of cute. “Nah, the heart attack in a cup is for my guy over there.” You gesture with a nod over to where Ransom is sitting by the window, intensely concentrated on whatever is on his computer screen. “He’s a bit too preoccupied right now to worry about ordering coffee right now, so I figure I’d do him a favor.”

“Oh, I see.” She smiles, showing her teeth. “You know his coffee order, that’s so cute. You make a cute couple.”

You frown. There it is again, the weird and awful crawling in your gut. “We’re not – “

“That’ll be ten fifty,” she says cheerfully.

You hand over the money, step aside to wait for the orders, and frown to yourself. What is with you lately? It’s not like people thinking you’re dating is unprecedented. You have established this already. It shouldn’t be a surprise, and you certainly shouldn’t feel weird about it, like, at all.

What would dating Ransom even entail, anyway? What could it give you that you don’t already have with the guy?

You’re no expert on romance, frankly, have always preferred one night stands and casual sex to attempting anything really serious. You’ve gone on your fair share of dates, but none that ever truly panned out. Almost everything you know about romance comes from the movies. And the movies are pretty clear about what they think romantic love is. There’s always this moment of intense-as-hell passion, this epiphany, this lightning bolt of a realization that the two involved parties are in love with each other. Then they kiss in the rain, or on top of a mountain, or wherever is supposedly the most romantic locale for confessions-turned-make-out-sessions. You just don’t do huge bursts of epic, well-scored love with Ransom. It’s not necessarily that you guys are devoid of passion or anything, just that what you have is reliable; a constant. That’s friendship, right? Isn’t friendship supposed to be reliable and calm and quiet and all that?

Thing is, you don’t want anything other than steadiness right now. If dating’s supposed to change that, then you don’t know that you’d ever want it.

Still, _would_ dating change anything? And would you really mind all that much, if all it changed was a shift in boundaries?

Mostly, you think, you just want to be close to him, and have him feel the same way. He’s your person. It’s been that way for a long while, now. Everything else is just sort of white noise.

They call your name, then, and in the process of collecting the coffee your train of thought is derailed. But that’s enough thinking about that anyway, you figure. You got to the same exact conclusion you’d had at the beginning. Talk about being unproductive.

Ransom looks up at you when you approach the table, eyes lighting up. “Bro, you got me my order,” he says, taking the coffee from you happily. “’Swawesome.”

You sit down at the table and watch him drink his coffee. There’s a slight lift to the corner of his mouth, stressed out as he must be. That’s all you need, really. To see him smile.

-

Ransom swings his head down so that he’s hanging upside down off his bed, close to your face. You’d probably be reminded of Spiderman if you weren’t so unamused by the time of night.

“Bro – “ you start.

“I know, I know,” he says. Even in the dark you can see how wide his eyes are, like twin moons. That’s your first clue that something is up, probably something bad. Your best clue.

“Bro, are you okay?” you say, frowning.

“I dunno.” You can see the tips of his fingers, clutching at the edge of his bunk so he doesn’t fall, and they’re trembling. “I can’t sleep, man. My thoughts are too loud. I don’t know what to do.”

It’s a plea for help. You can hear it in the rise and fall of his voice, the stuttering cadence of his words. He doesn’t ask outright only because he doesn’t know what kind of help he’s looking for. You can tell that much. Frankly, you don’t know what he needs, either. But like hell you wouldn't do everything in your power to help him find it.

“Okay.” You rub at your eyes. “Would it help to be in the same bed?”

He chews at his bottom lip. You almost reach out, brush your fingers against his mouth to get him to stop. Almost. “Yeah, I think so.”

“All right, then, c’mere,” you say, shifting.

He doesn’t ask you if you’re sure this time, as he usually does. He just moves, just climbs down carefully and gets into bed next to you and pulls the covers over himself. His shoulders heave, up and down, and you feel a surge of emotion rising up in your lungs and your throat, sympathy and affection and a need, burning, to help him be still for once.

“Could you hold me, maybe?” he says quietly, unassuming. “That could help.”

Wordlessly, you bring your arms around his middle, his back pressing against your chest. He reaches up with his hands and grips your wrists like a lifeline, and you can feel his pulse against your skin, hard and fast and relentless.

“Is this okay?” you whisper at last. You can feel him nod, head rocking against your collarbone, and you let yourself relax, just a little. You try to time your breaths, slow and steady, so that he can time them too, can line up his breathing with yours if he thinks it’ll help. You fall asleep soon after that, the sound of his breaths close to your ear and his heartbeat slowing to a rhythm you might memorize in your dreams, if you’re lucky.

-

This is definitely not the first kegster you’ve held together this year. Hell, it’s probably not even the eighth.

“Holster,” Ransom yells in your ear, voice cutting through the noise.

“What’s up, my man?”

“You’ve hooked up with Marcie before, haven’t you?”

“For a hot second, maybe.” You glance over at him. “Why?”

He looks meaningfully at you.

“She’s dece.” You shrug. “Thinking about hooking up with her?”

“She’s been making eyes at me all night.” He peers across the room into the darkness doubtfully. “She’s kinda hot.”

“I say go for it, dude.” You clap a hand on his shoulder. “Live fast, die young.”

“Bad girls do it well,” he finishes automatically. Then, he looks at you. “That is a terrible motto for you. You are neither bad nor a girl.”

“I’m the baddest bitch there is,” you say, pretending to be offended. “How _dare_ you.”

“Nah man,” he laughs. “You’re the greatest good I’m gonna get.”

“Bro, did you just compare me to Frozone’s wife?” you say, touched. Oddly, your heart clenches. “She’s literally the best character in the whole movie.”

“I guess that makes me Frozone.” His face lights up. “Holy shit. I’m Samuel L. Jackson.”

“The second best character in the movie.” You clear your throat. “Figures that even through our fictional counterparts, we’re married.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he says. He takes your hand, squeezes it lightly. Fondness bursts in your gut, warm and bubbling, but before you have any time to recover from the sudden well of affection he up and fucking _grins_ , wider than you’ve ever seen him smile in recent memory, colorful lights glinting off his teeth and corners of his eyes crinkling, and for some reason you feel like you’ve just been punched in the gut or like your heart’s just been ripped out or something equally stupid because fuck, it’s the prettiest goddamn thing you’ve ever seen. It rocks your fucking _world_.

Your heart attempts to do something acrobatic in your chest, and falls utterly gracelessly on its face.

You have just enough time to think, _shit_ , before he says, “All right, catch you later, dude, ‘kay?” with a wink and moves away.

“I get the attic tonight,” you yell after him. Your voice shakes, which is just stupid. You bring a hand up to your cheek, slowly. It feels like your face should be burning, burning, on fire. Feels like everything should be burning.

“Um,” you say to yourself, out loud, “what the fuck?”

Okay, so this is new, you’re pretty sure. Ransom has smiled at you before, obviously, but you’re reasonably certain your insides have never attempted to strangle themselves when he has. Like, that is probably something you’d notice. Right? Have you ever thought he was that beautiful when he smiled, before?

You’ve always thought he was beautiful, to be honest, in times of happiness and all the other ones. Just never really put it like that to yourself. Never really thought that much of it, how happy his happiness makes you. Isn’t that just a thing that comes with being best bros?

All right, okay. This is something you just hadn’t noticed before for some reason, then. So why have you, this time? What gives? What _changed_? And why is the idea that something might have legitimately terrifying?

When the kegster winds down to a slow end, you help Bitty clean up. After, you walk to the stairs, up to the attic. You sit on your bed, and you think. It’s hard to force yourself to sit down and just think, because you’re a man of action, damn it, and your action in times of crisis is usually to go to Ransom and cuddle him into submission until you mutually decide to have a feelings jam. But that is, for multiple reasons, out of the question right now. So you hunker down, you frown at the questionably stained floor, and you _think_.

Exhibit A – you have not, since the day you met each other, spent more than maybe a handful of hours apart, aside from breaks. And on breaks, you call or Skype at least once a day. That, at least, has not changed.

Exhibit B – you have never imagined kissing or having sex with him or doing anything in between not necessarily because you don’t want to (though, honestly at this point, you’re not sure if you want to either) but mostly because you’ve just never let yourself do it. Has that changed? Inconclusive.

Exhibit C – you discovered, as of approximately two hours ago and possibly with the help of a liberal dose of alcohol, that seeing your best bro, your soulmate, light of your fucking life Justin Oluransi smile like that is basically the most effective way to induce your heart into trying to murder itself. Okay, so that’s definitely a difference, at least in terms of, like, perception or something. Also, the reason you’re doing this in the first place.

Exhibit D – immediately before Exhibit C occurred, he squeezed your hand. You’ve cuddled with him, you’ve displayed affection in all sorts of ways with him, but he’s never held your hand before. God, is that what’s fucking you up so badly right now? That he did something that could possibly be romantic but isn’t even necessarily always that way? Shit, though, it happened so fast but you felt so safe when he did it. So _content_. Even though you knew he’d have to physically let you go at some point, even though he did literally seconds later, there was this sense of steadiness. Of constancy. In a metaphorical sense, it felt profoundly as if he _wouldn’t_ let go, that he’d always have you and that’s how it was always going to be. That feeling makes you feel better than anything. It’s the first time you’ve really taken note of it, but you’re not sure if it’s the first time you’ve ever felt it. Is it? It’s a strange feeling, but still, it doesn’t feel new, in a weird sense. In a way, you feel just the same as you’ve always felt in his presence. At peace.

Okay. So the feelings were already there, maybe (probably?), but him holding your hand was the catalyst to your awareness of their presence. Possibly? That’s interesting. You feel almost as if you’ve conducted a science experiment. Ransom would be proud.

And what are your conclusions? Let’s take it one step at a time.

You love him. That’s the easy part, because you’ve loved him for a long time, almost since the day you met.

There is a slight (very slight, but distinct) possibility that you might love him in ways that aren’t strictly platonic. Hand holding can be platonic, you figure, but you’re not sure that your brain really wanted it to be, in that moment. That’s exponentially harder.

Because what does it mean, really, to be in love with someone? What’s the difference? Do you even really know what that’s like? Because, like, obviously you’ve been attracted to people before – men and women and everyone in between, like that goes without saying – and you’ve definitely done stuff with people before and you’ve even dated people before. But being _in_ love? How are you supposed to tell the difference when you don’t even know if you have a basis of comparison? That’s almost worse than not having a basis of comparison at all.

And the thing is, you’re _happy_ the way you are. You’re happy living with him in the attic and casually watching movies and playing video games while cuddling and maintaining his coral reef when he’s stressed out (although, if you think about it, that could very easily be a euphemism for something) and just generally inhabiting the niche of “bros being bros” by being there for him. You have never, not once, resented your original resounding agreement that everything between you was completely platonic, and you don’t plan on starting soon. Besides, Shitty always makes the point that platonic and romantic love in relation to soulmate bonds can be mutually exclusive, and you don’t really need to be romantically involved with your soulmate – or anyone else, for that matter – for them to be just as important to you.

Still. _Is_ it mutually exclusive, in your case? Would you mind dating him? You dismissed the idea just a short while ago. Dating would be a simple redefining of boundaries, you’re pretty sure, as you thought back then, so it’s still true that you don’t feel the need to date him. But – maybe you want to? Maybe you want to hold his hand and kiss him on the cheek and have the world know you’re together, that you will be with each other for as long as it’s possible to. Maybe you want to go further than that, or maybe you just want to exist with him by your side, forever and always.

Maybe you are in love with him.

“Fuck,” you groan, and fall back on your bed. What the fuck does that even _mean_?

(And you thought you’d finished your sexuality-crisis-soul-search bullshit already. Fucking hilarious.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to [believesinponds](http://archiveofourown.org/users/believesinponds/pseuds/believesinponds) for helping me out with the discussions of sexuality in this part, both answering all my various questions and reading over a couple scenes. =]

**III.**

You’ve always been pretty good at not thinking about things when you don’t want to. It’s an art form, really, how effective you can be at ignoring all but the most pressing concerns. This time around, though, it is literally impossible not to think about the remote possibility that you are at least a little in love with your best friend.

(Perhaps, in a way, this indicates that the issue actually _is_ pressing. You have never appreciated the way your brain works less.)

The thing is, at least part of the reason why you can’t fucking stop thinking about it is you don’t know _how_ to think about it. You don’t know the first place to start when it comes to figuring out the difference between friendship and romance. Like, sure, you still want to watch movies with him on free Sunday afternoons and make sure that he’s happy and maybe very occasionally stay up late at night with him to look at the stars and talk about your feelings, but like, does that mean you want to _date_ him?

You don’t know what you want, frankly. And that’s kind of terrifying. It’s been a long time since you last felt so unsure of yourself.

(And, at twenty two years, feeling like a teenager again is honestly just gross as hell.)

You find yourself in a bit of a deadlock with yourself, going back and forth in increasingly meandering circles of uncertainty inside your head that don’t actually lead you anywhere. It’s useless, you decide. You can’t do this on your own. You will actually up and fucking die if you have to do this on your own, if only from the brain hemorrhage your own stupidity will give you.

The next question, then, becomes who the best person to help with beating your feelings into submission could be. You go through the list of potential candidates in your head quickly.

Lardo probably has way too much of her own shit going on right now to deal with yours. Bitty hasn’t been exposed enough to your particular brand of ranting and you don’t want to scare him off too badly. The name Jack flits across your consciousness briefly enough for you to shove it back into the _fuck no_ section of your brain.

Which leaves… Ransom?

(… You’ll talk to him later. Soon. Not now, though. You need time to build up your case. To prepare yourself for what could quite possibly be the first, only, and most awkward conversation the two of you have ever had with each other.)

And Shitty.

Holy _hell_.

Still, the guy has good things to say about soulmates and love. Maybe it’s worth a shot. You just have to know when to take it.

Turns out that’s not hard to figure out, either. The opportunity practically falls into your lap, actually. One moment, you’re sandwiched between Ransom and Shitty on the couch downstairs, watching reruns of some shitty sitcom you’ve probably seen a million times, and the next, Ransom is leaping off of it, phone in hand and shouting, “Ah fuck gotta go study for this major test tomorrow I’m gonna die!” over his shoulder.

Shitty doesn’t look up from the TV. “Five bucks says he’s actually ditching us for a hook-up,” he says.

You consider the evidence. Phone clutched in hand, but tension definitely present in his voice. It could go either way.

“Maybe,” you say. “Speaking of hook-ups.”

“Uh oh.”

“Can I ask you for advice about something?” you say, as nonchalantly as you can.

“You’re not about to ask the resident aro ace about your sex life, are you? Because, bro, like, I’m here for you, but also, I think I’ll be fine without that information in my life?”

“Nah, man, nothing like that.” You shift slightly in your seat, the better to see him with. He looks at you, curiosity clearly piqued, the sitcom all but forgotten.

“So what is it?” He raises an eyebrow at you. “Come on, out with it. I’m not a fucking mind reader.”

“Uh. It’s about relationships, kind of?” You consider that briefly. “Relationships, and soulmates, and also love.”

“Ah. You have come to the renowned Shitty Knight for worldly advice on soulmates and-or sexuality. I understand everything now.”

“Your advice is definitely not worldly,” you say.

“You laugh now, but I’ll start charging by the insult.” He tilts his head. “So what’s up, Holtzy? Something you can’t tell our dear Rans?”

You pointedly roll your eyes at him. “It’s not like that, dude, okay? I think – I just – “ You frown. Just fucking _say_ it. “So I may be reconsidering my original agreement with Ransom to keep our soulmate thing strictly platonic. Maybe.”

Well. That was easier than anticipated. Maybe you just need to talk about this kind of thing without, like, thinking at all, and it’ll be okay.

He blinks at you. “That it?”

You blink back. “What do you mean, _that it_? What could possibly be more momentous? More _earth-shattering_?”

Shitty shrugs. “I guess for some reason I was expecting trouble in paradise. Then again, this _is_ you two we’re talking about.” He squints at you. “It’s been, like, years.”

“I know, man,” you groan. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know why it took me so long. I don’t even know what love is. Fucking hell, Shits, what is love?”

“Baby, don’t hurt me,” he quips.

“Shitty, I’ll fucking kill you, don’t think I won’t.”

“Harsh, bro.” He makes a humming noise, contemplative. “All right, all right, let’s work through this. Have you ever been in love with anyone before?”

“Fuck, man, I don’t know.” You run your hands through your hair agitatedly. “I’ve dated lots of people. Slept with, like, a good majority of them.”

“Uh huh. When was the last time you had a serious relationship?”

“The fuck is a serious relationship?”

Shitty pats you on the shoulder. “It’s whatever the fuck you want it to be, bro.”

You try to think hard about it. Honestly, embarrassingly, you don’t really have to think about it all.

“I think,” you say slowly, “the most serious thing I’ve ever had was with Justin.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Surely not romantically, if I’m understanding this situation correctly.”

You wave your hand. “Romantic, platonic, anything in between. Just. In general.”

“Fucking _hell_ , bro.” He almost sounds impressed. At your idiocy, probably. You might be, too, if you weren’t you. “Shit’s getting deep if you’re busting out first names.”

“Yeah, thanks, I hadn’t figured that one out for myself,” you snap, not quite able to keep the tension in your gut from leaking into your voice.

He pats you on the shoulder again, not unkindly. “So you don’t think you’ve ever had serious feelings for someone before?”

“Man, I don’t know.” You frown again. You honestly don’t. You’ve liked people before. Probably. You think? You’ve been attracted to people enough to hook up with them, anyway. But you can’t remember if you ever thought, _hey, this is a person I want to mash faces with on, like, a regular basis_ with any of the people you’ve been with. Can’t remember what you thought about them at all. “Only thing I know is I’m serious about this. That’s all.”

“Okay. And what exactly makes you think it’s serious?”

“It’s – “ You wave your hand vaguely. You’re not even sure you know how to put it into words. It’s a gut feeling, maybe. A magnetic pull, if it didn’t make you feel so gross to so much as think that. It’s the fact that you care about Ransom so much sometimes you feel full to bursting with it, just this overwhelming want, _need_ , for him to be completely, incandescently happy, for the rest of time and forever. It’s how _good_ he looks when he’s happy, and okay, fine, he looks good all the time, you can admit that to yourself, but when he smiles? Shit, if looks could kill, his smile would cure world hunger and usher in a century of peace. His smile would move _mountains_.

Maybe it’s too much to ask, to be the one who helps him be happy. But that’s really all you want. You just want to be there when he smiles.

(And okay, fine. If your fixation on his mouth isn’t obvious enough, you honestly might be warming up to the idea of kissing him. Not that you’d ever admit that to Shitty in a million years.)

The thing is, you don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way before, as terribly clichéd as that might sound. You can remember all the people you’ve ever crushed on, but you just don’t remember if it was the same. That’s what makes this so damn –

“Complicated,” you say finally, lamely.

His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Seriously?”

“Okay, so like – “ you sigh. “I have clearly, obviously liked people before. But it’s like – it’s just for fun, you know? It’s chill. We hook up, we have a couple laughs, we part ways, and that’s fine. When I’m seeing people I’m not really looking for anything else other than a chill time. I don’t _want_ to look for anything else. And, like, obviously, I cared a lot about Ransom before I – “ Shit. You breathe in, breathe out, try again. “Before I realized this. But it’s like with him I _could_ be looking for something else? I’ve just never felt so close to anyone before. And, like, I feel so close to him, I can feel the potential to _be_ something else, if we both wanted it.”

You can’t believe Shitty has let you ramble this long without chirping you. You look over at him, almost hopeful that he’ll say something mocking just to make this feel less weird, but he just meets your eyes and smiles a little.

“Not,” you say, feeling the need to clarify, “that what we have right now isn’t enough. It absolutely is. Fuck, I’ve never felt happier with anyone else. And romance isn’t any better or worse than what we have, yeah? It’s just different. Just like – a matter of how we want to think about it? Fuck, man. I don’t know.”

“Damn right.” He strokes his mustache contemplatively, which is how you know he’s thinking hard. “Hm, okay. So like, I definitely don’t want to be the guy to enforce labels and shit on you if you don’t want them, and this isn’t, like, a professional fucking diagnosis or anything, but – have you ever considered the possibility you might be demiromantic?”

You stare at him. “The fuck is that.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, and ah, yes, you know what he sounds like when he’s about to go on a legendary sexuality spiel. “So it’s a thing on the aro spectrum, right? And basically you need to have some sort of emotional connection to someone before you wanna romance it up with them. It’s a thing on the ace spectrum too, demisexuality. And like I’m obviously not saying at all that you gotta think of yourself that way because, like, labels are all about what make _you_ feel comfortable with your identity and all. It’s personal shit, right? I’m just saying, you know, maybe it’s worth looking into, see what other people say. Hell, you could figure out you fall somewhere else entirely different on the spectrum. Or not at all, even. But it could help sort things out if you thought about it some more. Like, Google it or some shit, you know? Actually, scratch that, I’ll jot down a couple sites for you to start with, there’s a metric fuckton of resources out there…”

You nod. It’s not quite the answer you expected, to be honest, but it’s a starting point. And it’s weird to think about this new word he’s given you, but not because it’s totally out of the realm of possibility? It’s just because you’ve never thought of it before.

“I always thought bisexual was the only word I ever needed,” you say.

“And who knows? It might be.” He shrugs. “This shit isn’t set in stone, you know? Things change, the more you learn about yourself. No one’s saying you have to call yourself something you don’t want to. Just worth looking into, you know? Maybe it’ll help sort things out in your head, if you know what words to use.”

You let yourself exhale, slowly.

“You know, Shits,” you say, “you really are good at this whole validating sexuality business.”

“That’s what they all say, Holtzy,” he replies fondly, slinging a comforting arm around your shoulder. “And in the meantime, you should, you know, probably tell Rans what’s going on? He won’t hate you for telling the truth. And, like, he deserves to know.” This last sentence is punctuated by a knowing glance, as if he knows what you’re already thinking.

(Not a fucking mind reader, your ass.)

“You’re probably right,” you admit.

“ _Probably_ ,” he scoffs.

“That’s all you’re gonna get, bro.” You shake your head. “Holy hell, what are we going to do, though? I’m about to throw a goddamn wrench into everything.”

“Man, I know you guys,” Shitty says, clapping his hand on your shoulder. “For two living trainwrecks, you sure do know how to work things out with each other.”

“… Thanks?”

“No problem,” he says cheerfully. The confidence is, admittedly, reassuring. You could always use a little more of that nowadays.

-

(You do a bit of research on your own, as Shitty suggested, read through more blog posts and forums than you knew could possibly exist on the subject, scroll through your phone before you go to bed until your eyes hurt. It’s enlightening, a little. “Demiromantic” becomes a word you tuck somewhere under your breastbone, a possible identifier, a potential way to make the mess of thoughts in your head make just a little more sense. Not necessary, really; if people ask, ‘bisexual’ is still going to be the first word you go to. But it’s something to think about, to turn over in your head. You’re not used to the idea of it yet, still find yourself poking and prodding at it in the back of your head uncertainly, but who knows? Maybe one day you could be. Maybe one day, it’ll be a word that will make your head a less confusing place to be.)

-

Soulmate Talk Version One Point Five goes a little something like this.

You’re crammed next to Ransom on your bunk bed, laptop perched precariously on your thighs. _Clueless_ is on. His ankle is hooked over yours, and his arm is snaked around your back, hand resting lightly on your hip. It’s two in the morning and you’re tired, tired enough to feel the ache of it in your eyelids, tired enough for honesty and awake enough to admit to yourself you don’t want to move. You kind of want to stay like this forever.

“I can’t decide if I want to be Paul Rudd or if I want to be with him,” Ransom says. “Especially young Paul Rudd. Holy _fuck_ , young Paul Rudd.”

He’s tired too, you can tell. When he’s tired, he loses his filter and thinks everyone is hot. An appropriate complement to the mess of your own emotions.

“Is it possible to do both?” you say. “Nah, that’d be too weird.”

“Not if you did it, like, not simultaneously,” he says.

You huff a laugh. “There was definitely an easier way to say that.”

“Shut up.” He taps his hand lightly against your hipbone. “Rude.”

You shift slightly. It’s enough for him to glance at you.

“Something up?” he says casually.

“Speaking of wanting to be with someone,” you answer, just as casually.

A brief silence. You kind of just look at each other, for a bit.

“Do you want me to pause the movie?” he says.

Neither of you are really paying attention anymore, but it’s okay, you’ve seen this one enough times to recite a good sixty percent of the lines while drunk off your ass. Besides, maybe the background noise will help soothe your nerves. Just maybe.

“It’s fine.” You clear your throat. “I might have discovered something about myself recently.”

“Ooh. Kinky.”

“Not like that, dickhead.” You shove at his foot with yours and just kind of leave it there, too lazy to take it back. “Have you, um. Ever heard of something called demiromanticism?”

“Maybe? Shitty might have tossed the word around a couple times.” He snaps his fingers together. “Oh, is that the one where you aren’t romantically attracted to people unless you have some sort of emotional connection to them or something?”

 “Or something. Yeah.”

He looks at you again, this time lingering. “That you?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” You gesture vaguely with the hand that isn’t pinned by his side. “Like, what is romantic attraction, though? What the hell does that even mean?”

“Love is tough.” He pokes you lightly in the ribs. “So you _like_ someone. That’s how you know, right? Have you ever really liked people before?”

You grimace at him. “I’m not sure? Thing is, I don’t know if I like – this person like that or if I just think they’re the best of best friends I’ve ever had. Like, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that before. That’s why I’m not sure about this whole – thing. Like, Rans, I cannot begin to tell you how much I don’t fucking know what romance is.”

“Ha. Do any of us know what we’re doing?” He smiles at you, gently. It knocks you on your ass a little, which is a little sad considering you’re already sitting down. “Who’s the lucky guy? Or gal, as it might be. Or nonbinary pal?”

You look down at your lap, waiting for the pieces to fall into place. It’s almost laughable, at this point, that you’ve gotten this far, that you’ve literally always been able to tell him anything in your head, but when it comes to this, this stupid thing that barely even matters, there’s still a part of you that wishes he understood you so well you never had to talk about it out loud. “Come on, Rans.”

You can’t see his face in response to that, can’t decide if that’s a good or a really bad thing. Still, you don’t need to see him to feel the precise moment when things click for him. His breathing changes, just a little. His hand rests on the skin near your stomach, motionless.

“Oh,” he says.

(Shit. You just made things weird. They’ve never been weird between you two. You don’t know how to deal; you’ve never had to.)

“Did I just make things weird?” you say, quietly.

The words seem to snap him out of some sort of trance. He shakes his head vigorously. “Nah, man. Just thinking.” He squeezes at your waist. “Just – let me get this straight for a hot second. Ha ha, straight, that’s funny. Anyway. You think you might like me. But you don’t know if you like me in, like, a friend way or, like, a romantic way.”

“That’s a lot of ‘likes’ in one sentence,” you say. He’s blunt about it, which you’ve always found helpful, but right now it feels almost akin to ripping a band-aid off without warning. You were not remotely prepared for how the truth would sound on his tongue.

“Shut up and tell me I’m right.” He nudges at you, enough so that you look at him. His eyes are wide and unblinking, but they’re not freaked out, or scared. They’re… interested. Which is interesting, in itself.

You exhale slowly. “Yeah, you’re right. Happy, asshole?”

“Incandescently.” He knocks your temples together. “We can try to figure this out together, you know. You don’t have to do this on your own.”

Something loosens a little in your chest, something you didn’t know had been tight in the first place. “And how would we do that?”

He shrugs, shoulder shifting against your arm. “We could date. Casually, you know? Just to see where it goes. See if what you’ve got going on is legit. And, like, if we decide we want to make it a serious thing, then we go for it. And if it doesn’t work out, that’s fine too. It’d take more than stupid relationship drama to tear us apart, right?”

His voice is level, but you can tell there’s an undercurrent of something there – excitement, maybe? Anticipation? – he’s trying to hide. So this isn’t exactly something he’d be opposed to, either. But that thought doesn’t feel quite right. You’re missing something. On a whim, you decide to try to figure it out.

“What I’ve got going on,” you repeat. “And what about what you’ve got going on?”

You can feel him still against you. You close your eyes and focus on the feeling of his breaths, the side of his chest shifting against yours. The movie plays on in the background, voices you can’t bother trying to make out.

“I don’t think I’d mind,” he says. “Could swing both ways.”

It is, you note, an incredibly vague answer (and, out of context, a totally sick bi pun; you’re so proud you might cry). But you don’t push it. Like hell you’re going to give anything less than the utmost respect to his boundaries.

“As long as you’re up for it too,” you say.

“Come on, bro,” he says, leaning his shoulder into yours slightly. “Like I’d pass up the chance to go out with your sweet ass.”

You frown. “I mean, when we started this whole thing, we did say – “

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs again. “It’s what we needed back then.”

You try to remember _back then_ , when you started your first year of college a few years older than all the other guys and felt like you had no right to feel out of place. When you weren’t ready for the very idea of romance, let alone actually putting it into practice. You think about how much things change, and you wonder if they’ve changed enough. Or if they’ve changed at all.

“But,” Ransom continues, “soulmate talks can be up for renegotiation if things change, right? And this isn’t even really a renegotiation. It’s like – an addendum. Like – do we even really need to do things that much differently?”

What _would_ change? Mainly the way you think about each other, right? The caring, the consistency, the all-around good feeling – that’s already there. It’s just a matter of different intentions.

You could do that, maybe. Or, at the least, you kind of want to find out if you can do that. At this point, that’s basically the same difference.

“And you want to,” you press.

“Casually. No strings attached. No pressure. We can keep it open, even, if you’d like.” He rests his head on your shoulder and sighs. “I just don’t want you to have to figure out this bullshit by yourself.”

“Okay, casually.” You extricate your crushed hand, reach over for his free one. Your fingers lace together easily, named wrists brushing lightly against each other. You like the feeling of his hand in yours, warm and solid and dependable. A constant. “So what does that mean?”

“Bro,” Ransom says, looking down at your joined hands with a slow smile, “it means whatever the fuck we want it to mean.”

You can’t help but grin, at that. The echo to Shitty’s previous sentiment reminds you that that’s what you’ve always been to each other. You’ve never been any more or any less than who you are. That’s all there is to it. That’s all this has ever been.

-

Ransom wakes you up the next morning, still in your bed. “Morning” and “waking up” being operative terms, in this case, considering it’s still dark outside what the shitfucking hell, and also considering he doesn’t so much wake you up as he pokes you relentlessly in your sides.

“Oh my _fuck_ ,” you groan, rolling away from him in a feeble and vain attempt to rebuff him. “I’m supposed to be the alarm clock in this relationship. This is a blatant breach of soulmate bro code rules and I will not abide by this. Holy hell, _stop_.”

“Holster,” he says. “Holster Holster Holster.”

“Don’t tell me what time it is, I think I’d rather die.”

“Holster, we should go on a date.”

You roll over and fix him with what you hope is the most murderous stare he’s ever seen in his goddamn life. “Bro. You did not just torture me awake just to tell me that.”

“No, okay, listen, I’ve been thinking about it all night – “

“ _And it couldn’t wait until morning_?”

“No,” he says, and holds a single finger to your lips. Universal sign for _Hush, bro, hear me out_. You shut your mouth like you’re supposed to, but you hope he doesn’t expect you to look happy about it. “Bro, this is important. This is our _future_ at stake.”

“You said we could be casual about it!” you burst out, promptly breaking at least five bro code rules in the process. You don’t care; he broke them first.

“Okay, but I also used the word dating, and we can’t date unless we actually go on dates,” he says sagely.

You stare at him.

“Again,” you say. “Why. Am I. Awake.”

He sighs. “Because I couldn’t sleep until I asked you out for real. Happy?”

He had to say that, of all the fucking things within the realm of the most tangentially possible things he could have said. Fuck your ass.

“Couldn’t stop thinking about it?” you say quietly.

He nods, eyes wide in the dark.

“All right,” you say. “Let’s go on a date.”

(It could help, honestly, to use actual words when it comes to describing what you’re doing. If you use actual words, maybe you’ll know better what feels right or wrong. Maybe.)

“’Swawesome.” He sounds genuinely happy about it, which makes you feel warm inside, despite yourself.

“But sleep first,” you say firmly, wrapping your arms around his middle.

“Sleep first,” he agrees. He settles into your arms without complaint, and you go back to sleep like that, warmth of his body pressing insistently against your chest, just like you’ve done a thousand times in the past.

-

Of course, this also means that when you wake up for real, you actually have to think about what the word “date” means.

(For fuck’s sake, though, this is getting ridiculous. How many words have you had to actually think about their definitions properly in the past few weeks? You’re not a fucking dictionary.)

At its most basic, you suppose, a date is what happens when someone asks someone else out. A give and take, if you will. There’s the asking, and there’s the intent. Everything else, probably, is up for fair game.

In which case, you and Ransom have actually been on tons of dates. Or have you actually been on no dates at all, if you didn’t actually think of them as dates? And what makes this time so different? Do you actually have to plan something? What the fresh hell?

Luckily, someone else has done the thinking for you for once. Ransom drops a heap of brochures on your lap at lunch time and sits down next to you with a smug smile. He clearly thinks he’s a genius.

“Why do you look like you just ate shit?” you say, looking down at the brochures.

“Shut up. I know what we’re going to do for our date.”

You blink. “And that would be - ?”

“Planetarium, bro!” He snatches the brochure on top and thrusts it into your face excitedly. “There’s this museum that’s all sciency and shit like half an hour away from Samwell, and it has a fucking planetarium!”

“So what, we get to stare at a projection of stars for, like, an hour?” You raise your eyebrows at him. “Bro, that’s the lamest first date I’ve ever heard of. Whatever happened to the classic dinner and a movie?”

He hits you on the top of your head with the brochure. “We are not classic. And planetariums are the fucking shit, bro! You can’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. Have you tried it?”

You heave a sigh in his direction. “All right, all right, fine. But if you’re going to drag me off campus to go to some boring-ass nerd shack in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, it better be good.”

“Please, as if you have any better ideas,” he scoffs. “Your idea of a good date is probably dragging the poor chick or bro to the latest shitty romcom.”

“The fucking audacity! I will not have you besmirch the good name of romcoms like this, Ransom!”

Still, the planetarium becomes a done deal (mostly because you really can’t think of anything better to do; Ransom is right, damn it, the extent of your creativity can only get you so far as whatever’s playing in the movie theater right now), and Ransom books tickets for that weekend. The morning of, when you wake, you stare up at the bottom of his mattress and think, _I am going on a date with my best bro today_. It’s not as weird of a thought as it might have been a short while ago, now that you’ve actually let yourself think it. Now that you’ve opened yourself up to the possibility. Honestly, it could be fun. It could also be totally wrong for the two of you.

(Only one way to find out.)

You take a cab to the museum, and Ransom pulls you to the place by the hand. You want to crack a joke about it – _hand holding on the first date, ooh, Rans, we’re moving so fast_ – but also if you do, you run the risk of him doing something stupid like letting go. So you let him drag you through all the nerdy exhibits before your time in the planetarium and try your best not to chirp him too badly, in case he pouts.

It’s not as bad as you made it sound a few days back. He points out all the interesting bits and adds tons of science nerd jargon and trivia you didn’t know, eyes lighting up when he catches sight of something particularly good. And he doesn’t let go of your hand as he takes you, just sort of casually leaves your fingers hooked together as he rambles on, just smiles at you every now and then and lets your arms brush together when you walk.

(No. It’s certainly not bad at all.)

When it comes time to go to the planetarium, you settle back in your seats and you stare as what you can only describe as a giant ass movie about the night sky starts playing on the ceiling. The chairs are so comfortable you could almost take a nap, if you weren’t unfortunate enough to catch a glimpse of Ransom at the beginning. His head is tipped back, outline of his face barely visible in the dark, but you can see the stars reflected in his eyes, and they shine.

After that, you can’t quite stop yourself from looking at him, and he never quite lets go of your hand. It feels good, you decide. Not wrong at all. If this is what dating entails, it’s definitely not something you’d mind doing. You could probably do this for a long time, looking at him with the stars in his eyes.

-

The two of you agree, mutually and silently, not to tell the rest of the boys about the slight amendment to your soulmate agreement, or at least not to actively bring it up unless they do. And you know they won’t. They already know you’re soulmates. Anything else is pretty much your business, unless you want to make it everyone else’s.

And there’s not really any need to, at this point. It’s like Ransom said – especially at the beginning, not much changes. The things that do probably aren’t noticeable to anyone else but you. His hand lingering on your arm or your shoulder longer than it should. A knowing glance in response to some offhand inside joke or innuendo, sometimes even a wink (or, more accurately, attempt to wink; Ransom likes to _think_ he can wink, which is hilarious enough you’ve never tried to convince him otherwise). Sometimes, he hooks his little finger over yours when you’re watching a movie on the ratty old couch downstairs. You go to more places with him alone, away from the rest of the team and the campus, backs of hands brushing while walking in silence or in laughter.

Even still, you can’t help but wonder which gestures he intends to be romantic and which are simply the ones you made back when things were still strictly platonic. Surely, there must be a difference, though if there is, you’re no closer to being able to tell than you were before this whole mess started. He never tells you, and you never ask. You’re not even sure you really need to know.

-

The rest of sophomore year passes by in a haze of exams and essays, and just like that you’re juniors, over halfway done with school and one year closer to graduation, to the ending of things, possibly even to the ending of you two.

No. You refuse. Even if you have to part ways, it’ll take a hell of a lot for either of you to accept an ending just like that.

(Still, how easy and how hard it is, at the same time, to let the things that matter to you go.)

-

Usually, you and Ransom and sometimes Shitty and other related parties study in the library together. Sometimes, though, you like to switch it up. There’s a lounge that Ransom says is promising – spacious, ambient, and a bit out of the way, so not that crowded – and you haul your asses halfway across the campus to find it. Turns out, it’s just as nice as Ransom promised.

And, as it turns out, there’s a dinky little upright piano in the corner, sad-looking but also kind of fitting in its quiet surroundings.

“Dude,” Ransom says, knocking your shoulders together, “you should play something.”

“Bro, I can’t just sit down and play if I haven’t practiced.”

“Come on, man, you said you play but I’ve never heard you,” Ransom presses.

“Yeah,” Shitty pipes up from your other side. “Serenade us, brah.”

You sigh. “All right, but don’t complain when it turns out I’m, like, the worst ever at it.” You drop your jacket into a chair and walk over to the piano. You sit down at it, staring at it contemplatively, searching your memories for a song. You nod to yourself, settling, and bring your fingers to the keys.

You play.

It’s a number you learned years ago, one of those songs that just kind of stick in the back of your head and never really quite let go. You haven’t practiced in a while, but there are those rare pieces that you’ll never forget no matter how long it’s been since you last played it, and this is your quintessential forever-song.

(Some things just stay with you your whole life. Surely, there’s nothing wrong with that.)

When you’re finished, Shitty erupts into applause. “I’ve never felt so fucking serenaded in my life,” he says.

You glance over at Ransom, who’s looking at you strangely. “What?” you say, faintly amused. “Do I have something on my face?”

He shakes his head. “Didn’t know you played the piano that well, bro.”

You shrug, the compliment settling warmly in your chest. “It’s just a song.” You get up from the piano and go over to sit down next to him. As soon as you do, he grabs your hand and holds it to the light. His fingers brush over your knuckles, soft and warm.

“These are _musician_ hands,” he says, reverentially. He sounds so dumb you burst into fits of snorting laughter you can’t fight back, even when he hits you in the bicep.

-

After a successful game with the boys, you and Ransom decide to hit the bars up on your own. It sort of happens without either of you asking. Yet again, that strange blur between what is a date and what isn’t. It’s becoming more familiar as the days go by, and you don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

After a couple of drinks, Ransom is already feeling loose enough to start pointing out the hot people. You don’t mind, really. You sort of enjoy listening to him ramble on, leaning your elbows back on the bar and grinning as he describes how attractive the eyebrows of the guy two tables over are.

“They as good as my eyebrows?” you say, not so subtly fishing for compliments.

“Please, like you put any work into those.” He squints. “Wait, is that March?”

“March, like volleyball-hips-of-an-angel March?” you say, following his gaze.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I think she just looked at me. Twice.”

“Bro, what are you waiting for?” You take another sip of your beer. “Go for it, dude.”

“But – “ He glances at you, hesitating. And just like that, you understand.

“Ransom, my man,” you say, “if you decide not to hook up with a hot girl just because of me, I am going to kick your sorry ass.”

“Aren’t we – “

“Not officially, yeah?” You clap a hand on his shoulder. “Now, go get ‘em, tiger. Don’t make me tell you twice.”

He glances at you again, but this time he goes. You wonder, for a moment, what you really meant, by “not officially”. What he meant, all those times he looked at you. What it means that, for the briefest of times, the two of you were actually unsure of each other.

Then, you order another drink, and promptly stop wondering.

-

“Bro,” he says, late one night after a long and private bout of drinking. You’re on the floor of the attic, lying spread-eagled, one arm sprawled across his heaving chest.

“Hm?”

“You haven’t seriously dated anyone in college yet.”

“Mm-mm.”

“’Neither.” He laughs. “So many hook-ups, though.”

“All the casual sex,” you say.

“All of it.”

“And then there’s you,” you say to the ceiling.

“And then there’s me,” he agrees.

Quiet, for an amiable moment.

“What would you do?” he says. “If you wanted to seriously romance someone?”

“Dunno. Depends on the person, I guess.” You rub at your eyes. “Start with a mixtape, maybe. That shit is romantic as _fuck_.”

“That’s gross.” He hums to himself. “Honestly I’d probably just go for it. I’d just have to be sure they wanted it. Totally, two hundred percent sure. Don’t wanna force myself on anyone like that, you know?”

“Yeah.” You close your eyes, chasing the spots of colors behind your eyelids. “Sounds good.”

He doesn’t say anything to that for a while. You can hear his breathing, though, and it’s louder than usual, and heavier. Maybe you should be concerned. Or maybe you should just blame it on the alcohol.

“Man,” he says finally. “What the hell are we doing?”

For once, you’re not sure what he means. There’s a myriad of things he could mean. A myriad of things he could expect you to do, and a myriad of things he could want you to say. And that’s not even touching on all the things _you_ could mean or want to do. Who knows if they’re the same thing?

“Being us,” you say. Seems a safe enough answer. “Anything else is too hard.”

Silence. So fucking much of it.

And then –

“Bro,” he says. “Did you just make a dick joke?”

You grin, let the feeling of it seep across your face lazily. The quiet is answer enough.

-

The weekend before the semester’s first round of midterms, you walk back into the attic after a long day of studying with the expectations of sinking into your bed and losing your mind in your favorite season of 30 Rock for the next hour or five.

What you find, instead, is Ransom curled up on the floor clutching at his head, textbooks and notes strewn about him and his chest heaving up and down.

Quietly, you back out of the room. You head down to the kitchen, and you draw a tall glass of water. You fill it as much as it can hold, and you head back up the steps, careful not to spill a single drop.

When you get back into the attic, he’s calmed down a little, enough to uncurl so that he’s lying on his back. His expression is hard to read, for once, so you don’t bother trying. You set the glass of water on his desk and carefully lie down next to him.

“Test anxiety again?” you say.

He nods. You can hear the sound of his skull rolling around on the floor. “More than that, I think,” he says, quietly. “I started thinking about how this test is this big part of my grade, and how if I fail it I’ll probably fail the class, and if I fail the class I won’t have time to retake it because of all the other prereqs I need to finish, and if I fail the class without retaking it I won’t have a shot in hell at med school. And then I started thinking about the future, because if I don’t have a shot at med school, I don’t have anything. And then I couldn’t stop thinking.”

His words leave a raw sort of silence in their wake. You struggle, for a moment, to come up with something to say. This is your problem with this kind of thing, though you would wish it away in a heartbeat if you could. You’re better at actions than you are at words, and what he needs right now is for you to say the right thing. _It’ll be okay_ is out of the question. So is _don’t worry_. All you know is what not to tell him.

Eventually, you decide not to say anything at all. You just reach out and take hold of his hand, slowly, so he has time to back out if he wants to. He doesn’t; he just tightens his grip around yours, and clings.

“It’s all coming to a head next year,” he says. “We’ll have to _know_.”

You let your thumb graze over his skin, slowly. “That’s next year,” you say. “We don’t have to think about it until next year.”

He sighs. It’s long, and shaky. If you could reach out and smooth that sound out for him, you would.

“I guess not,” he says.

You get up soon after that. He drinks the water you brought him as you stroke his back soothingly, and then you both climb into your bed. He doesn’t ask, and neither do you. You both knew it was going to happen anyway.

-

“It’s your birthday tomorrow, isn’t it,” you say to Ransom one morning at breakfast. He raises his eyebrows at you.

“Don’t tell me you forgot,” he says. He’s joking, of course. You’re bad at dates, but not with his.

“Nah. Just don’t know what to get you.”

“Like I need anything more but your steadfast and loving companionship,” he says, knocking your knees together under the table.

“We have a game tomorrow,” you say slowly, trying to think. What can you do for the guy when you’re going to be so damn busy?

“Oh yeah, there we go, see? What better present is there than a great hockey game?” His eyes light up, then. “Bro. Bro, get me a goal.”

You stare at him. “Bro.”

“Bro, I’ll get the assist,” he says, grinning.

You’re pretty sure your heart just about stops in your chest. “ _Bro_.”

“You with me?” He holds out his fist, unable to contain his excitement at this revelation, this brilliance.

(You can’t, either.)

“Bro,” you say without hesitation, knocking your knuckles together, “all the fucking way.”

The next night, it happens. It actually fucking happens. He passes you the puck and it hits the back of the net like a dream. He crashes into you before anyone else, screaming into your ear and clutching at your jersey, and your helmets knock together, and his brilliantly smiling face is close to yours, so fucking close. Your heartbeat’s in your toes, your breath stuck somewhere in your throat, and you bring your arms up and hold him tight, euphoria bursting in your chest like so many fireworks as the team piles around you and _screams_. You can’t tell, really, who the goal made happier. It’s a goddamn feedback loop. The more he smiles, the more you do, too.

-

Your last game of junior year is rough on everyone.

(It hurts, a little, wondering how much you could have pushed, just how much _more_ you needed to do to make things turn out differently. Sure, you all did your best. That’s fine to say, to think. It’s harder to feel.)

The ride home is silent, mostly. Ransom rests his head on your shoulder, and you let your arm curl around his bicep, let your hand rub back and forth over the fabric of his jacket rhythmically and slowly. You don’t need to look to know his eyes will be wide open.

Silence, again, when you get back to school, unpack all of your stuff, haul your asses to bed. Silence when you crash onto your mattress, deafening silence when he climbs the ladder and crawls into his bed and the springs creak softly under his weight. Silence in your thoughts, silence in the room.

“Holster?”

You sigh into your pillow. An inevitability you should have expected. “Yeah?”

“Can’t sleep.” He doesn’t mention ghosts tonight, or nightmares, or stress. The straightforwardness of it all would almost make your throat tighten, if you didn’t know any better.

“All right. Come on.” You shift in your bed, pressing yourself to the wall. It’s almost second nature, at this point, knowing just how much room you have to leave for Ransom to fit next to you. You just have to lie on your side facing him, nothing to it. It takes seconds for him to take the space you’ve left him. You can feel his arm pressing against your chest, warm and insistent.

“Adam,” he says again, voice soft. He’s not looking at you. You can tell even with how dark it is.

“Justin.” The name comes out on a measured breath.

“Do you think we’d be like this, still? If we weren’t soulmates?”

The question gives you pause for one terrible moment. It’s just about the last thing you’d expect him to ask, which is fucking stupid considering he’s not supposed to be able to catch you off guard anymore. It’s unfair, is what it is. Totally and completely unfair.

Damn this boy, honestly. Damn him for getting this serious when you’re supposed to be sleeping, after a day like this. Damn him for not being able to talk about this in the daytime, because the light makes words freeze up in your throat and the dark loosens them from your lungs and you know that better than anyone. Damn him for expecting you to answer, because how the hell can you answer a question like this, how can you possibly know what would happen in a universe you don’t live in, that you don’t want to live in?

(Damn him for making you even consider the possibility of not having him in your life.)

“’Course, bro.” You swallow thickly. “Do you doubt me?”

“Nah, man. Never.” He sighs, and it’s small and delicate but somehow it still manages to twist at something in your heart, something painfully anonymous. “Just thinking about how much easier the soulmate thing made it to find you. Like, I had a heads-up for who to look for, you know? I mean, when we first met… Felt like I’d been looking for you my whole life.”

And god, it actually kind of hurts, how much you know what he means. It’s not something you’ve ever talked about, not in so many words, so it’s strange, in a way, strange and comforting and infinitely terrifying, to know that moment made just as much sense to him as it did to you.

“After a night like this?” He laughs shakily. “I’ve never been happier to have you here.”

“Yeah,” you say, because sometimes he understands you more than your words could ever say, and this is almost certainly one of those times.

“Love you, bro,” he says, curling up under your sheets. “Mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah.” You restrain the sudden urge to sling an arm over his stomach, to press yourself into his side and line up the cracks of your hearts and just _breathe_. He needs his space tonight, and all you can do is give it to him. “Me, too.”

Even so, when you wake up in the morning, you find him nestled in your arms, back pressed against your chest and head resting on your shoulder. If you leaned your face forward, just a little, you could press it into the back of his neck, maybe even nuzzle it a little. If you wanted to.

You screw your eyes shut and focus on your breathing. If it gets too irregular, he might wake up, and if you close your eyes it’s easier to pretend having to let him go eventually isn’t yet another inevitability to grapple with.

-

At the end of the year, you’re both voted captains, and as with many things in your relationship, it is just as much a surprise as it isn’t.

Neither of you planned a speech together, obviously. You stand together and make one anyway, his knuckles brushing warmly against your own, and you grin so hard your face hurts.

-

And then you’re seniors, graduation looming in less than a year and the future swiftly becoming something you actually have to think about.

(One word to sum up your feelings about it – _balls._ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can imagine whatever song you like for the part where Holster plays the piano. I personally like to go with [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG9KSWYg-Jc), because I am secretly a huge sap.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently when I said "finish editing" I actually meant "make the last part five times longer than it originally was", and when I said "there won't be horrific delays" I actually meant "there will be very, very horrific delays". I have no excuses, just an inordinate amount of ridiculous bros-being-bros shenanigans to make up for my shortcomings. As one does.
> 
> Warning for: drunken sexual situations. If there’s anything else I missed, let me know.

**IV.**

The thing about senior year, you think, is that the only thing people really care about is its ending.

Not that you don’t care about that. Schoolwork, at this point, is practically irrelevant compared to the thought of graduation, of leaving behind the textbooks and the neverending student loans and the soul-crushing exams. But endings come with nothing but absences, and if there are good absences like the homework and the sometimes pretty subpar dining hall food, there are also the absences like the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team, and Annie’s coffee, and Bitty’s pies, and a false sense of security, and –

And –

And have you thought enough about that ending? Have you thought enough about everything that comes after? You told Ransom once that you didn’t have to think about it until next year, but now it _is_ next year. Now it all feels more real than it ever has, the vast uncertainty that comes after graduation looming over your head like a damn guillotine. But how _could_ you have thought about it, before now? How could you do anything but let the present moment carry you to the next?

That’s what you tell yourself, anyway, when you drive back home with Ransom after junior year is over, in the moments when he’s dozed off in the passenger seat and there’s nothing keeping your attention from the road except for the sound of the radio. Nothing keeping your attention from the thoughts that wonder if it matters that you don’t really know what to call him anymore.

Not quite best friends, because he knows you on a level that makes those words feel somehow lacking. Not quite brothers, because in the last year you’ve fooled around enough (off screen, of course; times that didn’t feel particularly special, because it was him, just another way the two of you silently agreed to express your closeness with, and yet somehow _were_ special for the same exact reason; times you might have stopped to think about what the hell you were doing, if he were _anyone else_ but him) for that term to be wholly inappropriate. And not quite boyfriends.

Soulmates, then. Surely that word is simple enough to use, if only because you’ve been using it for so long. It’s the closest you can get to the truth, anyway. And yet even a label like that doesn’t feel big enough for all that is and could be, between the two of you. Which is just stupid.

“Words are stupid,” you say out loud.

“Mm?” Ransom says, shifting in his seat.

Damn. That’s the last time you decide to be introspective. Figures that you’re the kind of guy whose thoughts are connected to his dumbass mouth if you’re not careful. Figures that you’re the kind of guy who’s rarely careful.

“We’re almost there,” you say.

“Oh, good,” he says, stretching in his seat. “You’ve got no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to Mama Birkholtz’s cooking.”

“You and me both, bro,” you say, and smile.

About fifteen minutes later, you pull into your driveway and turn off the engine. You should move, probably, with your family waiting inside your house and all. But you don’t, mostly because you’re waiting for him, and he doesn’t move either. He just looks at you, for a bit.

“This is going to be a good summer,” he says.

Does he think you need the reassurance? Well. Maybe you do, at that.

“Thanks for driving all this way by yourself, bro,” he adds. “You’re a fuckin’ champ.”

He leans over and presses his lips to your cheek. You glance toward him, startled, but he’s already getting out of the car and making his way to the house, hands in pockets. He’s facing away from you, but you don’t need to be looking at him to imagine the expression on his face – soft, small smile, half anticipation, half sheer joy of being alive. Without even seeing it, you know it’s just about the prettiest he’s ever looked.

The thing about senior year, you think as you watch him go, is that getting to the end is just as important as the end itself. And you don’t really know how prepared you are for any of it.

-

Before Ransom drives up to Toronto to see his family and you stay in Buffalo for your internship, you decide to visit the Falls for what is presumably the last time before you graduate.

(Not the very last time, surely. That is an important distinction you refuse to linger upon.)

There’s not an air of finality to this, you think to yourself adamantly. Not when you park in the parking lot. Not when you get your tickets for the boat ride. Not when you wander over to the viewing platform and lean your elbows on the railing, tipping your head toward the rushing force of the water and letting the warmth of the sun fill up your lungs.

This is normal. This is the way it’s always been.

But Ransom slots himself next to you, upper arms pressing against each other, his face tilted toward the horizon miles away, and there might not be an air of finality to this but there’s an air of _something_. Even you can’t deny that.

“So this is pretty romantic,” he comments. He has his sunglasses on so it’s impossible to really tell where his eyes are, but he’s facing forward, and you can probably guess where he isn’t looking.

“Please,” you say. “We’ve been doing this for years.”

“Bro, habits aren’t inherently unromantic.”

“They’re not inherently romantic, either.”

“It’s been almost a year,” he says, and now you’re talking about something completely different, and you wish, for a second, that you could just close your eyes and feel the water beading on your skin and drown everything else out.

“It’s not casual anymore, is it,” you say.

You can feel his shoulder rocking against you as he shrugs. “Don’t know what it is.”

You swallow. “Do you want to?”

“Do you?” His head turns toward you.

It’s still, for a moment. Little kids are shrieking somewhere in the background, voices speaking sentences that shift and melt into each other so you can’t tell who’s saying what, all the noise undercut by the low and steady thunder of the Falls. And you’re kind of just standing there, staring at your own reflection in his glasses and wondering where his eyes are. Wondering if that even matters.

(The thing about this romance thing is, you’ve thought about it way too much and far too little in all the wrong places. You’ve struggled to find the words for the feelings inside you, and you’ve pushed them away whenever it gets too hard to think about the future. How much easier it would be, if you could just make yourself tip the balances the right way for once.)

“This is super heavy,” you say.

The comment surprises a laugh out of him. “Sorry,” he says. “You know I don’t want to push you into anything.”

“I’m trying,” you say. “I promise, I’m trying.”

He smiles at you, and lets his hand cover your own. “I know,” he says, fondly. “And it’s enough. Promise.”

He looks down at the clock on his phone, then. “Shit, we’re gonna be late for the boat ride if we don’t hurry.” Before you can answer, he threads his fingers through yours and pulls on your hand. “Come on, we gotta run.”

And you run for the boat, him pulling you along at speeds that are potentially dangerous to the small children passing by and you holding onto your hat with your other hand rather desperately. Romantic, indeed.

Later, he lets go of your hand, but he makes up for it by slinging an arm around you as the boat rocks under your feet and the Falls rumble majestically around you and the water flings itself into your face. He laughs at you, all soaked through because you were too stubborn to bring a poncho, and he grins at every rainbow that shines through the veiled mist you pass by. It’s hard to decide what’s more beautiful, the hazy prism of colors that surround you or the smile on his face. They’re both just as dazzling.

-

The summer goes by quicker than you hoped it would, and before you know it it’s time to go back to Samwell.

Moving all of your shit back into the Haus for the last time is sort of freeing, if a bit bittersweet for your taste. Ransom puts the last of his underwear into the drawers, and you slot the last of your books into place on your shelf. He collapses on your bed, and you don’t complain about it or attempt to make him move (like you could ever make Ransom do anything he didn’t want to do). You just fit yourself next to him, a leg and half your ass hanging off the edge, heat of his body blazing against the bare skin of your arm.

“Well, that’s done,” Ransom says.

“Yup,” you say back.

“We’re not coming back here next year, are we?”

“Nope.”

“Shit.” His breath stutters over the word. Your heart clenches, for an agonizing second.

“Rans,” you say, “what the fuck are we going to do with our lives?”

He’s silent for a moment that stretches and pulls and burns. You almost wish you could see into his head, know what he’s thinking, his dreams, his desires.

(You don’t actually wish for that, because his thoughts are his own, and he has a right to them.)

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “Just know I don’t want to do it without you.”

You don’t point out the improbability of that, how unlikely it is for him to find (and actually get into) med schools and for you to find a job in the same state, let alone in the same city. You don’t point out how hard it is to live on your own when you have to pay for all your own rent and food and living expenses, when all you might have is each other and how you’ve heard so many stories about how sometimes even that isn’t enough. You especially don’t point out how much you know it’s going to hurt when you graduate and you turn around and he’s not there, right behind you or next to you. How you can’t even imagine pain on that scale because you’ve never had to, but you will. Even if it’s only for a moment – and god, how unbearably likely it is that it’ll be more – you will.

You don’t say any of that. You just roll over slightly, slinging your arm over his chest and pressing your forehead to his shoulder and living in the moment as best as you can. It’s not that hard, when he is so present and so real.

“Me neither,” you breathe, squeezing your eyes shut. It feels, almost, like an admission. Like a secret you’d never tell anyone but him. It’s so obvious, though. You don’t know how the whole world doesn’t know.

(But how are you supposed to find the words that express how much you never want him to leave your side, or the words that know whatever this is between you two is as much of an inevitability as it isn’t? There’s not a shot in hell. You don’t even bother trying – maybe if you don’t say it out loud, you won’t have to think about it.)

He tilts his face to your head and presses a kiss to your hair, so gently you can hardly stand it. Then his arm comes up and he takes hold of your hand, slots your fingers together and clutches them like he never wants to let go. And maybe he doesn’t. Maybe that’s not so hard to believe, either.

-

Being co-captains with your best bro and not-quite-platonic-not-quite-definable soulmate Ransom is both easier and harder than you anticipated.

It’s easy because, in a lot of ways, it’s just like living your day to day lives. He covers your blind spots, and you pull him together when he threatens to fall apart from too much stress. The only difference is that here, you’re putting your combined energies into actual responsibilities, and it finally feels, for once, like you’re getting something done.

And it’s hard because sometimes, the boys on your team can really throw you for a loop.

For one, Chowder is currently having some sort of freak out in the locker room, and it’s not even game day today.

Ransom’s in a meeting with the coaches, and most of the other guys are focused on gearing up for practice. Looks like this is your fire to put out.

(Not that you really think of Chowder as a fire to be put out, as if he’s just a nuisance of a chore on a long list of them. And not that he or anyone else on this team needs to be subdued or changed or anything like that. But this is still your responsibility.)

“Hey, bro, what’s wrong,” you say as you approach him, trying to figure out if he’d be comfortable with you sitting down next to him.

Chowder’s answer is a long and rambling mess from which you ascertain, just barely, that whatever is going on isn’t related to practice and is, in fact, at least tangentially about his soulmate and girlfriend, Caitlyn Farmer. You can’t decide if you’re relieved at this turn of events or even more alarmed.

“Okay, okay, slow down, dude,” you say, holding up your hands as you sit down. “What’s going on?”

“Today’s our nine month anniversary,” he says mournfully, “and I don’t know what to do about it.”

You try very hard not to say anything that could be considered insensitive or invalidating, such as _Bro, if you’ve been dating for nine months you should probably know by now_ or _It’s only nine months, who says you actually have to do anything?_ It is, in your estimation, an admirable effort, considering you end up saying nothing at all.

“Like, I know that sounds stupid,” Chowder continues, drawing his eyebrows together in a very sad, un-Chowder way that should be illegal, Chowder should never be allowed to look that sad, “but I just really, really want to get it right. I know we’re soulmates but that doesn’t mean I can’t ruin it somehow? I really really _really_ don’t want to ruin it.” He brightens up, then, suddenly. “Hey, you and Ransom have been together for ages, haven’t you? How do you do the soulmate thing? Like, don’t you ever think about how much pressure it is? It’s your one shot at this stuff, isn’t it?”

This, all in all, is a lot to process. There’s the implication, for one, that your relationship with Ransom somehow makes you an expert on soulmate things (if it were appropriate, you would have already burst out laughing). There’s the part where, if this society was worth any salt whatsoever, people wouldn’t feel the pressure to get soulmate things “right” in the first place.

And then there’s ‘together’. No connotation of the platonic or the romantic. Just a word that should be innocuous, that should not have stuck out like a bright light to you, that should not have given you pause at all.

(If only ‘together’ was as easy as saying it.)

“You said you’ve been dating for nine months,” you say.

Chowder nods vigorously.

“You probably know each other pretty well, then,” you reason.

He beams. “Better than anyone else.”

“Then I think the best thing is just to trust that you both know each other well enough that fuck-ups don’t matter.” You struggle with your words for a moment (because as outspoken as you are you still find yourself at a loss when it comes to situations like this) and attempt to piece together a sentence that actually makes sense. “Like, fuck-ups are probably going to happen. But if you care about each other, you’ll probably care more about the other person than the actual fuck-up itself. You know?”

Chowder nods slowly, a look of intense concentration on his face. “It’s easier said than done,” he says, scrunching up his nose. “To not worry too much about it, I mean.”

“Yeah, I know. But that’s where the trust comes in. And soulmates don’t have to be one certain way, right? Soulmates are just – _you_. Everything else is just kind of background.”

“Yeah,” Chowder says. “Yeah!” He grins brightly. “You’re good at advice, Holster.”

Not really, actually. The only thing that made talking about this marginally easier is all the stuff you’ve learned from being soulmates with Ransom.

And even that, you’ve made harder for yourself. You just told Chowder something you’ve been telling yourself for years, and yet here you are, still beating yourself up for not knowing exactly how to feel about your own soulmate. How hypocritical is that?

(If Chowder and Farmer don’t have to be one certain way, who says you and Ransom have to be, either?)

“I guess practice is going to start soon,” Chowder says.

“Yeah,” you say. As you stand, you feel, for a brief moment, as if you’re on the precipice of some revelation, something on the tip of your tongue or just out of your reach. It almost feels tangible, like if you stretched out, just a little, you could figure something out, something very important.

And then Ransom comes crashing into the locker room, yelling, “Hurry up, boys, practice isn’t going to start itself,” and in the ensuing chaos, the feeling is lost. Which is just as well. Right now, you have bigger things to focus on than your own stupid thoughts.

-

You start searching for jobs around the same time Ransom’s finishing the last of his secondary essays for his med school applications. There’s a lot of weekend afternoons spent in the attic, legs crisscrossed together with his, laptops out and the sound of furious typing echoing through the room.

“Bro, like half my secondaries are asking me what my most important relationship is,” he says, his fingers flying frenetically across his keyboard. “Guess who I’m going to write about.”

“Bro. Don’t do that.” You frown at him. “Those fancy schools probably want to hear some sappy bullshit about your parents or your grandma or something, not a dude whose biggest accomplishment last week was throwing three kegsters.”

(Or, you do not mention, a dude he’s dating-but-not-like-boyfriend-dating. That would probably be too complicated to explain on an application, anyway.)

“Three and a half, at least,” he says.

“Okay, yeah, three and a half,” you amend.

“No, but you’re my soulmate, dude,” he says. “Isn’t that sappy enough?”

“Three and a half kegsters,” you remind him.

“I could write a whole book about why you’re important to me, and it wouldn’t be enough,” he says firmly.

“Bro, you mean that?” you say, your pulse suddenly skyrocketing in your veins, even though you know if it were you, you’d say the same damn thing.

“Bro. Of course.” Then he looks up and smiles, and it’s brief and gone almost as soon as it came, but it’s honest and comforting and self-assured all at once, and just like that, everything inside you just kind of _melts_.

You sigh, a small sound, and look back toward your computer screen. You almost wish job applications asked something like that. What you wouldn’t give to return the favor.

-

Ransom leaves for his first round of med school interviews, and it honestly sucks ass.

(“I wish I could just pack you in my suitcase bring you with me,” he said the day he started packing, staring mournfully at his half-full duffel bag and clothes scattered all over the room like some type of disaster zone.

“Bro, I dare you to find a single suitcase I would actually fit in, and I’ll take you up on it.”

“That is totally an unfair deal,” he huffed at you.

“And I’ve got classes, man. I’ve got my own life.”

“Yeah, I know.” He sighed. “Wish you could be there, anyway. Like, a lot.”

“Okay, come here,” you said, because you couldn’t stand to hear him make such a sad little sound, and he came over and wrapped his arms around your midriff, and you brought your hand to the back of his neck and hugged him closer, and closed your eyes and wondered what it would be like if you could have this for the rest of forever.)

Those nights alone in the attic are the worst nights of sleep you’ve had this whole year. Your whole college career. You never realized, really, how comforting Ransom’s presence is, above you or next to you or even down the hallway, until you just didn’t have it anymore.

This could be your life, in less than a year. Fuck, this could be every day for a long fucking time, if you don’t do something about it. When will you do something about it?

(You know, of course, that you’ll always come back together. After every interview he comes back to the attic all wrung out and missing you and he never climbs up to his bunk on those nights, just crawls under the sheets next to you and holds you silently. A separation is not forever, not for you two. That doesn’t make the present any less hard to deal with.)

-

Your phone buzzes, enough of a nuisance against the hard surface of your desk to jar you awake.

It is three in the morning. The name on your phone is Ransom’s. Those six letters are literally the only thing keeping you from chucking your phone out the window.

There might have once been a time when you would have answered him irritably. Now, you just bring the phone to your ear and say, voice rough with interrupted sleep, “What’s up, bro?”

“It’s in the morning,” he says, no preamble necessary. “Shit, it’s in the morning.”

“You’ll feel better for the interview if you get some sleep now,” you say, even as the futility of the words makes you wince.

“How do people without anxiety function?” he says, words rushing out of him like a flood. “Like, how do you just lie down and think, ‘okay, Imma sleep now’, and then _actually sleep_? Is that possible? What is it even like? God, it sounds nice.”

“Do you need me to help you through those breathing exercises?” you suggest. “Or you could use that meditation app you found.”

“I think, right now,” he says, “I just really want to hear your voice.”

Well. That, you can provide. Even bone-deep tired like this, you have this amazing tendency of not shutting up.

“Okay, so, like, as far as I see it, you have two options here,” you say. “You could either just let me talk for the next hour or so, and then you fall asleep just so you don’t have to hear me talk anymore, or we could have a feelings jam and make it a bit more mutual up in here. Your choice, bro.”

“You could sing,” he says.

That was not an option that had occurred to you.

“Okay, but, like, why,” you say.

“Your voice is soothing.”

Oh boy.

“I could be a total asshole right now and sing you the loudest, cheesiest song I can think of. Or Broadway _._ ”

“But you’re not a total asshole,” he says, more confidently than he probably should be. More confident than you are about it, certainly.

An idea comes to you, then. “Can it still be cheesy?”

A sigh, resigned. “You know I’d listen to you no matter what.”

The comment surprises a smile out of you, stupid as it is. “All right, but, like, don’t say I didn’t warn you, bro. You asked for this.”

You take a deep breath.

And you sing.

“Do you hear me? I’m talking to you…”

The melody is even more soothing without the guitar in the background, for which you have to pat yourself on the back. Of course, you also have to sing both the parts of the duet yourself, but seeing as almost no one ever wants to join you when you break into song that’s just old hat at this point. By the time you get to the chorus – “I’m lucky I’m in love with my best friend” – you figure he’ll either be calm enough to be able to make an attempt at going to sleep, or he’ll be so astounded by the utter cheese currently leaving your mouth that it’ll distract him from all the thoughts running around in his brain. Either way, it’s a win-win situation.

 “I’m lucky we’re in love in every way, lucky to have stayed where we have stayed – lucky to be coming home one day _…_ ”

As you hold out the last note, you let yourself wonder what it is he hears in those words, if he hears anything at all. If what he hears is the same as what you hear. You can’t decide which you’d prefer, for him to feel the same way or for him to create his own meaning from the words, different and new. Either way, for this to mean anything at all to him already means enough to you.

There’s silence, after you finish. You’re content to sit in it, to let the song speak for itself. You can hear his breathing over the receiver, measured and consistent, so you know he’s still there and awake, but maybe the silence is the best sign you could ask for, anyway. Maybe the silence means he’s present and with you, and feeling all the things that are impossible to put into words. Maybe that’s enough for him, too.

“Thanks,” he says finally, quietly.

You don’t answer. You just close your eyes, and smile.

-

The first letter comes on a Saturday morning, you still curled up in bed and Ransom at his desk, scrolling absently through his phone.

“Look, man,” he’s saying, “I literally have zero time for marathoning TV shows this semester. In fact, I have negative time. My schedule has literally swallowed itself into a fucking paradox. Do I actually have twenty-four hours in a day to do things anymore? _Who fucking knows?_ ”

“Bro, this is exactly what I’m talking about,” you say pointedly. “Like, you need to chill. Cut yourself some slack, you know?”

“Fuck you, don’t tell me what I need or don’t need, I’m strong and I’m independent and I don’t need no man.”

“Okay, but, like, if you don’t watch this stuff now, when are you going to have the time? Next year when you’re in your fancy ass med school and I’m – “

You break off abruptly, irrationally uncertain of what to say next. Luckily, he doesn’t notice, because right as you stop talking, he says, his voice a bit strangled-sounding, “Bro, I got into fancy ass med school.”

He turns in his chair to look at you, and when your eyes meet nothing moves for a solid second and a half.

Then you say, “Did you just say you got into med school?”

And he says, “Yup.”

And then you’re exploding out of your bed, throwing your covers off like you’re a butterfly bursting out of a fucking cocoon, and he’s up too and he’s reaching for you like he doesn’t have to think about it, doesn’t have to think about the fact that the first thing he’d do after news like this is to find you. You crash into each other in a way that resembles two freight trains colliding but involving far less death and far more limbs squeezing around chests and fingers tangling in hair and a chant of “Holy hell, Rans, holy _fucking_ hell,” that seems to roll off your tongue continuously and his breathless laughter in your ear, bright and infectious and unstoppable.

(Living in the moment, usually, means letting them pass into the next one effortlessly and without thought. Living in the moment right now means wanting nothing more than for this to be endless and infinite. You strive for nothing more in this life than to live in the fucking moment.)

You don’t think about taking another step into the unknowable future, or letting another piece falling into place. All you think about, all you can think about, is how happy he is right now, and how happy that makes you in turn. That’s all that matters.

That’s all that’s ever mattered.

-

(There’s Boston University, and after that there’s John Hopkins, and after that there’s the University of Washington.

The parameters of your job search narrow significantly, to Boston, to Baltimore, to Seattle. A few offers trickle in from other cities. You’d probably be embarrassed about the fact that you don’t really think about it when you turn them all down if you ever actually told anyone.)

-

“Look at this,” Ransom says at breakfast, slamming his phone down in front of you. “Look at this and tell me what you see.”

You blink down at the phone screen. “It looks like the smallest apartment I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

“Wrong, motherfucker.” He scrolls down the page with his finger triumphantly. “Point – within the vicinity of this thing, and I do mean a _very_ comfortable walking distance, there are no less than five different bars. _Five_ , Holster. Point – literally right next to a bus station, talk about convenient. Point – it’s right in the middle of the cutest goddamn neighborhood, like seriously, Boston has some really nice historical shit. And best of all, the price of rent doesn’t make me want to stab my eyeballs out. If I split it with a roommate, obvs.”

“It only has one bedroom,” you point out instead of lingering on the frankly terrifying implications of that last sentence.

He hesitates. “I wasn’t really thinking that’d be top on our list of problems – “

_Our_. “Nah, nah,” you say quickly. “I mean, like, what about a guest room or some shit? Don’t well-adjusted adults have those or something?”

“Oh, fuck that, let’s just get a giant ass couch and throw it in the living room, anyone cheap enough to come visit our sorry asses can have a field day.”

“Cheap? Okay, I resent that a little, you’re worth so much more than that, bro. Also, why Boston?”

“Because, dear Holster,” he says, “I happen to know you’ve gotten some pretty sick offers from a couple of firms in the surrounding area.”

Your heart kind of freezes in your chest.

He smiles at you, softly. “Come on, man. Don’t hold out on me now.”

You open your mouth to say something – you’re not sure what, but nothing is probably not a viable option, here – right as the frogs (though they’re not really frogs anymore, are they?) crash at the table. “Oh, what are you guys looking at?” Chowder says cheerfully, peering at Ransom’s phone screen.

“Apartment hunting,” Ransom says unconcernedly, as if the two of you didn’t just have an important discussion torn apart by the sheer force of underclassmen.

“Apartments?!”

“That’s domestic as fuck,” Nursey pipes up from Chowder’s other side.

“Bro, that doesn’t make any sense, it’s a perfectly normal part of post-college life – “

So there’s another conversation about the future, derailed again. They have the tendency to do that nowadays. And it’s not like you have an infinite number of days to try to actually properly initiate one. But the longer you put it off, the harder it gets to want to bring it up.

-

Eventually, you do manage to get Ransom to marathon a show with you.

It almost doesn’t happen, because between the med school shit and the current school shit and the hockey shit and all the other shit you have to deal with in your lives it’s not like either of you have time in abundance. But then comes Thanksgiving break, and Ransom’s parents let him stay at your place for the week (provided you drive up for at least a day), and between all the turkey and family shenanigans there is just enough time to binge the first season of Grey’s Anatomy.

If it weren’t for the fact that you’ve known Ransom for so long, you’d be embarrassed about doing this in your old childhood bedroom, with its bright plaid bedspread and astoundingly outdated posters covering the walls from floor to ceiling. But it’s him, and so you think nothing at all about the fact that the bed is so small your feet hang off the edges, or that you need to hold an arm to his waist to make sure he doesn’t fall, or that you can’t cuddle too much in case one of your siblings forgets to knock and wow, how embarrassing would it be to have to explain to your family that you’re _just_ cuddling?

None of that matters. It’s him, and you’re lying next to him with your arm around him and your legs pressed warmly together, and his head is resting on your shoulder and he’s letting his fingers trace patterns absently across the skin of your arm and he won’t shut up because he’s the kind of person who actually likes talking through movies and shows (“Like, bro, I know I’m just a lowly bio major but I’m pretty sure that fucking your coworkers is probably less than eighty percent of what a doctor does in real life?” “Is fucking people less than eighty percent of what you do with your time, Rans?” “Hey. Hey fuck you.”), and it’s _him_. That’s the thing that matters more than anything.

(And then there’s the fact that this is going to be the last real Thanksgiving break you two will get to share, if you start working next year. It’s a bit ridiculous that the thought upsets you so much, but it does. So you pretend it doesn’t exist, and leave it at that.)

-

Even the kegsters you host together are numbered. It’s totally not chill to think about.

Still, what more can you do but live in the moment? If you think too much about the kegsters you’re not going to have, there’s no chance in hell you’re going to be able to enjoy the kegster you’re at. And tonight is Epikegster Twenty Fifteen. If there’s any party to enjoy in all your years of college, this is it.

So, the moment. The moment to live in right now is this –

The aftertaste of tub juice mixing on the back of your tongue with the lingering notes of your favorite beer, as vile as it is reassuringly familiar;

And the music that pulses through the floorboards and the wall of the Haus, thudding through your chest and striking the beat of your pulse;

And the crush of bodies pressing in on you, hot, skin slick with sweat, a tangle of chaos that somehow makes you feel at home, and at peace, and alive;

And Ransom throwing a ball into a red solo cup, face flushed with victory and lips stretching into a grin that sends your heart clattering around in your ribcage, noisily and with abandon;

Because nothing, nothing in the whole damn world could make you feel more alive than a sight like that.

He catches you watching him. His smile widens. He mouths something at you, and amazingly enough, in the dark and with the mess of human beings all around you, you can tell what it is.

_Like what you see?_

You swallow down the dizziness with another mouthful of beer.

_Always_ , you mouth back. His smile turns blinding.

You lose track of each other for a bit, the sea of people to talk to swallowing the both of you. But, like the tide, you come back eventually, somewhere at the base of the stairs and about as away from the chaos as you can get. Which is to say, not very far away at all.

He yells something that gets lost in the noise. You shake your head and lean slightly toward him, and he brings his face closer to yours and speaks into your ear.

“Bro, you going to try to hook up tonight?”

It’s a fair question, you suppose. The two of you have hooked up plenty in the last year since you started dating, not to speak of the years before then, and sometimes you’ve even hooked up at parties like this. And maybe there’s nothing more to his question than wondering if he’s going to have the attic to himself tonight. But you’re sober enough to actually have a no-bullshit answer, and you’re drunk enough to actually tell him what it is.

“Don’t want to go home with anyone,” you say to him. “Just wanna be with you right now.”

He stares at you, eyes wide and shining dully in the low lights. And you stare back, because his eyes are so pretty you could get lost in them if he let you, and because somewhere deep inside you, there’s a flare of recognition that this here, this is something different. Because you’ve hooked up with each other before, too. Of course you have.

But you’ve never so much as said anything about it. Not like this.

He laces your fingers together, then, swiping his thumb across the skin of your knuckles, and for a frozen moment, in spite of the people, in spite of the flashing lights and the noise and everything else, no one exists in this room except for you, and him.

“It would kind of be rude of us to leave our own party,” he says, chewing at his bottom lip. You might be imagining the breathlessness in his words. Then again, you might not.

On an impulse, you reach out and let your fingers graze gently against his mouth. He stops biting his lip, more because his jaw dropped out of surprise than anything else, but whatever. You’ll take it.

“Worse things have happened,” you say, swallowing thickly. “I’m sure they can manage.”

He doesn’t step toward you, but somehow he feels closer anyway, impossibly large, filling up your entire field of vision with the sight of him.

“Bitty’s going to hate us,” he says, trying and failing to hold back a smile.

“Hashtag worth,” you intone. He laughs, and it sends a fucking shiver down your spine, tingling all the way down to your toes. He’s already tugging you up the stairs, and how utterly goddamn conspicuous this must be, a couple of huge d-men thundering up the stairs hand in hand where anyone could see, but you don’t give a shit anymore. Maybe you’re drunk on the alcohol, or maybe you’re drunk on the feeling of his hand in yours, or maybe every single person in this Haus deserves to be just as drunk on whoever they’re with as you are drunk on Justin Oluransi.

And maybe reasons don’t really matter, because you’re at the attic and he’s pulling you into your bed, and now you’re lying side by side crammed in a space that can hardly fit one of you on a good day, and nothing matters when the end result is something so gorgeously, gloriously fragile.

He turns his head to you, as if he might say something, and you turn, too, your heart trembling in your throat. And there’s silence for a moment that stretches and pulls between you, silence as the enormity of the situation, his sweaty fingers hooked through yours and a gleam in his eyes that almost reminds you of shooting stars, threatens to drown you.

“Stars in your eyes,” you mumble.

His eyes are wide in the dark. “What?”

“I kind of don’t want this to stop,” you say.

For a moment you mean this, this right here between you, and for a moment you mean something entirely different. Then the moment passes, and you don’t know what you mean anymore.

He just kind of looks at you. Maybe he knows. Maybe he’ll tell you.

But all he says is, “Me neither,” and then you kiss him, lips clumsy and warm against his, and his hand slides under your shirt and brushes hotly against your ribcage, and you put your hands at his waist and pull him over you so that the heat of his legs straddles your hips, and he does something with his mouth to your collarbone that pulls a groan from somewhere deep inside your gut; and it just doesn’t matter anymore.

-

The next morning –

(When you wake up to him drooling and snoring on your chest, a happenstance that is gleefully embarrassing enough for you to snap a picture or ten;

When the two of you brave the aftermath of the epikegster you ditched, sneaking down the stairs as quietly as two human giants are capable of being, and bear witness to the carnage, identical winces stuck on your faces;

When he pours a bowl of your favorite cereal for you;

When you flick a soggy cornflake onto his right cheek, and he retaliates by pouring orange juice into your breakfast, and the only thing that stops you from starting a full-on food fight is Bitty walking into the kitchen with Kill Bill siren vibes practically radiating off of him;

When you look at yourself in the mirror for the first time that day and discover a row of purpling hickeys probably visible from outer space marching across your collarbone, and Ransom comes into the bathroom and sees them too, and brushes his thumb across them over and over until you cave and make him get in the shower before you can do anything terribly drastic like jump his bones before you even get a chance to put on clothes;

When you brush your teeth as Ransom showers, the rhythms of your morning routines sliding together as effortlessly as puzzle pieces, so easy to move with him through your day you barely have to even think about it – )

The next morning, life goes on, and it’s just about what you expect. Nothing about Ransom could surprise you anymore. Which, in retrospect, might be the most surprising part of all.

-

“So when’s the deadline for deciding which fancy ass med school is good enough for your not so fancy ass?” you say, very casually, on the bus to your next away game.

Ransom blinks at you. “April fifteenth,” he says. “And I take offense to that, what the fuck, my ass isn’t _not_ fancy.”

“Double negatives are definitely not fancy,” you say.

“Fuck you and your dumb standards of conformity.”

“Sick burn,” you deadpan. “So, like, is that apartment you were looking at still up for grabs, or?”

“I mean, last I saw, which, like, not that I refresh the listings every single day but I definitely do, there were still rooms in the complex available.” He stares at you, eyes widening. “Wait, are you saying – “

“Boston University’s a good school,” you say carefully. “And half an hour from Samwell? Bro, we could take weekend trips down to Samwell _every weekend_.”

“We,” he repeats.

“I mean,” you say, backtracking furiously from your slip-up, “time’s running out, you know, if you don’t act soon you’re going to miss out on all the sweet furniture deals – “

Ransom surges forward and crushes you in a hard embrace, which takes you so off guard you sort of lose your breath. A pair of bus seats isn’t exactly the ideal place for an emotional hug (your elbow is digging uncomfortably into your own ribcage, and seriously, if he’s not careful, you’re actually going to fall out into the aisle, and wouldn’t that be fucking spectacular) but, with how warm he feels pressed up against your chest and his face burying into the crook of your neck, you can’t exactly bring yourself to complain.

“Next year,” he breathes into your ear, “is going to be motherfucking _‘swawesome_.”

That, you think, odd heat prickling behind your eyes and fists tightening in the back of his shirt, is one hell of an understatement.

-

Playing on the ice, now, is somehow easier than it ever was before.

It must be the experience. Not that it didn’t feel like you’d been playing for years when you first started, because god, you’ve never had on-ice chemistry with anyone else the way you do with Ransom, but surely it can’t hurt that this is the fourth year you’ve been playing together. Surely it can’t hurt that even after four years, you’re still growing closer, still discovering that the limits to how much you can know a person don’t really exist at all.

And it must be your new unspoken agreement of solidarity, of facing whatever the unknown hurls at you together, no matter how hard it gets. Surely that can’t hurt, either.

On the ice, it’s easy to live in the moment. It’s easy to focus on nothing but the pace of your own breathing and the presence of him and everyone else around you, where the puck is and where it needs to go. On the ice, it’s easy not to get caught up in thinking about the future, to just let yourself exist and be exactly what you need to be to get the next point. It’s your last semester; might as well make it count.

Playing on the ice is easy. Your relationship with Ransom is even easier.

-

(And the thing about your relationship with Ransom, the thing you’ve been chasing after for so long, is that it doesn’t even really matter if your feelings for him are strictly platonic or romantic.

Romance only matters as a label insofar as you enjoy doing things that are supposed to be romantic, and you’re pretty sure at this point that you could be living in a dumpster and you’d still have a grand old time as long as Ransom was there. And words help make things make sense, but you don’t need to make sense of the fact that what you want, more than anything else, is to be with Ransom. It’s the one constant you’ve had this whole time.

It’s probably fair to him, though, if you actually tell him all of this. Words don’t matter in your head, but they matter when it comes to relationships with other people, and you’ve spent long enough leaving this thing between you unspoken and undefined. You’re more than ready to put all your cards on the table. It’s only a matter of when, and how.)

-

You figure out ‘when’ a week before his twenty-third birthday (the timing seems rather suspiciously in line with all of these fucking revelations you’ve been having, but you know better than to question it). The ‘how’ is a little harder, if only because you spend so long agonizing over songs. You’ve known this guy for years. You should know by now what the best songs for you two are, right? No. Completely wrong.

Eventually, you decide to stop agonizing about it and put it together with as little thought as possible (it’s an approach you’ve taken for most things in your life, and hey, it’s worked out okay at least a good forty percent of the time), just going by instinct and gut feeling. The end result is hopelessly cheesy, hilariously terrible, and something you wouldn’t have the balls to give to anyone else. You burn the CD, scrawl the title on it with a black sharpie, and carefully write out the tracklist. Then you hold the CD out in front of you and squint at it.

**Just Bros Being Bros i.e. baby don’t hurt me i.e. so I might be a little in love with you but it’s fine, everything is fine, and I am really fucking chill about it I promise**

There. You actually have a gift this year.

You debate with yourself over the delivery of said gift for a bit. In the end, you decide subtlety is for nerds. When you wake up in the morning, you toss the CD case at his face, yell, “Happy birthday, dickhead,” and run out of the room before you can see if he’s woken up or not. Also, before you can snatch the gift back and burn it with fire.

This is cool, you think to yourself, waiting in the bathroom and brushing your teeth for lack of anything better to do. This is fine.

Ten minutes is probably too much time to spend on brushing your teeth. So you square your shoulders and take the stairs two at a time. It’s no big deal. It’s just a dumb present. He’s probably not even up yet.

You open the door to the attic and he’s sitting there in his chair, wide awake, your stupid mixtape in his hands.

He looks up at you, expression inscrutable. Your heart falls to your feet.

“Bro.” He stands up. “You made me a mixtape for my birthday.”

Your throat feels tight. “Yup. Sure did.”

“Just bros being bros,” he reads off from the cover. “Seriously, dude?”

“You know, uh, the rest of that title is kind of important too,” you say. Shit, he can see your face, and you absolutely have no control over what it’s doing right now. The fuck is it doing?

He throws you a disbelieving look. “The first song on this fucking thing is ‘What is Love’.” He takes a step toward you.

“A very important and timeless question, I think.”

“You’re really bad at this,” he says, taking another step, smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Bro, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” You shove your hands into your pockets and shrug. See, you’re chill. This is definitely the most chill you’ve ever been in your fucking life. “That playlist is the most romantic goddamn thing you have ever seen with your own two eyes.”

“Holster, you got, like, half your songs from Shrek.” Another step.

“Which just happens to be the most iconic love story of our time!”

“And, correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like the other half is from Fifty Shades of Grey?”

“Listen, man, that movie is _not its soundtrack’s fault_.”

“Like, for real, this is pretty much the straightest playlist I have ever seen in my life.” Another.

“Bro,” you say, a little weakly, “you cannot seriously be blaming me for heteronormativity right now.”

He’s standing right in front of you, now, close enough to touch. You’re almost afraid to, as if he’s an illusion or a mirage or a dream that will dissipate when you draw near, as if he could be anything right now but wonderfully, achingly human.

“You,” he says, “are just about the least straight person I know,” and he leans in closer, and kisses you.

Everything’s still for a breathless second, still and quiet. He brings a hand to your face, touching the line of your jaw softly like he’s scared you’ll break, and god, maybe you will, maybe you’ll just up and shatter right now, spilling all the feelings inside you across the floor in a flood. You ball your fists up in the fabric of his shirt and pull him closer, and fuck, you can feel his breath hitch, can feel it against your mouth, and it fucking _tingles_.

“God, Adam,” he whispers, fervently, like a prayer, so close you can almost feel what your name tastes like on his lips.

And holy hell, that is everything.

(“Your morning breath is terrible,” you say when you finally break away, and he punches you in the shoulder and pretends to be offended, but the grin on his face kind of gives him away. It makes your heart kick a little in your chest, and you smile too, giddier than you’d be willing to admit with the feeling of _together_.)

-

Soulmate Talk Version Two Point Oh goes a little something like this.

You and Ransom are on the floor, because damn if your bed isn’t too small for feelings jams, and you’re sort of curled around each other like parentheses, but messier, just by virtue of the fact that you’re people and not punctuation marks. He has a hand in your hair, fingers curling at the base of your skull, and when they brush across the skin of your neck it sends a happy little shiver shuddering down your spine. You might find it embarrassing, were it not for the fact that, given the circumstances, you literally do not give a shit.

“Okay, so we probably should have talked about this way sooner,” you say.

“Talking sucks,” he says. “Making out is a lot more fun than talking.”

“I’ll give you that one,” you say. “But also, words.”

“Ew.”

“I know,” you say, with feeling. “But we have to know where we stand. It’s only fair to you. To the both of us.”

“Okay.” He pauses. “So where do we stand?”

“I think,” you say, and god, how dumb is it that it’s taken you this long to say this out loud and actually understand what you mean, talk about things to be embarrassed about, “I just want to be with you.”

He pats you admonishingly on the back of your neck. “What were you just saying about words, asshole?”

“I mean, like, it doesn’t really matter to me what we call it,” you say. “But I think it does to you. So I’m here to say I’m good with whatever you want to call us. As long as, like, we both know what that is.”

He hums thoughtfully. “Best bros?”

“Yup.”

“Boyfriends?”

“Sure.”

“Cuddlepies?”

“Jesus fuck.”

“You said you’d be good with whatever,” he says, smirking.

“Okay, but please don’t make me hear you say that word ever again, Rans, Christ on a bike – “

“Soulmates,” he says quietly, breath whispering over your skin, and he brushes his hand over the letters of his name on your wrist and moves his lips closer to the shell of your ear, and suddenly, just like that, you’re warm and tingling all the way down to your toes.

“Yeah,” you say. “That.”

He laughs, probably at how dumb you are. You can understand that.

“I feel like I need to apologize, by the way,” you say. You twist your hand so that you catch his fingers in your grip, squeezing around them lightly. “I’ve put you through some shit this past year or so.”

His eyes widen. “Don’t do that, bro. Seriously. You were just figuring your shit out, you have nothing to say sorry for.”

“I know, but – “ You sigh. “When did you know you liked me in, like, a not platonic way?”

He glances down. “That’s not important.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” you nod, acknowledging his right to his privacy. “But if I’d known – I would have been more careful. I would have talked about it with you more, instead of keeping all this crap to myself. Really, though, I just thought it was something I should be doing on my own.”

He squeezes your hand back. “Together, dude. I told you we’d figure it out together. And we got here eventually, right? That’s what matters the most.”

Together. What a fucking word.

“You don’t feel bad about how much our original soulmate agreement changed, right?” you say, just to make sure.

He just kind of looks at you for a bit, and okay, yeah, you deserve that one.

“What else is there to talk about,” you muse. “I guess there’s the issue of monogamy, or potential lack thereof. And what counts as romantic and platonic stuff, if it has to count, and, like, boundaries?”

“Later?” he says hopefully.

“I mean, it’d probably be a good idea to get it all out of the way now – “

He rolls on top of you, then, knees on either side of your hips, and cradles your face in his big warm hands, staring into your eyes intently. His thumb grazes your cheekbone, and this time it’s a touch you can feel and recognize clearly, on your skin and in your insides.

“Or we could make out a little,” he suggests. “And hash out the details later.”

“Yeah, okay, later,” you say. “Later sounds good. Later sounds fun.”

(For once, though, you actually trust yourself to talk about it later, to work it out in a way that doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else as long as it makes sense to you. After everything that’s happened, the both of you have all the time in the world.)

He leans down. “Can I do something completely cheesy?”

You swallow. “This whole entire relationship is built on cheese. I mean, good thing neither of us are lactose intolerant, am I right?”

He nudges your glasses up with his thumb, just enough so he can lean down and press a kiss to the corner of your eye, and when your eyes flutter closed one kiss to each eyelid. A kiss, then, on the crest of each cheekbone. A kiss on your forehead, almost unbearably gentle. And a kiss on your mouth, warm and soft and lingering.

“Happy birthday again,” you mumble against his lips. You can feel him grin as it happens, stark against your skin, right before he kisses you again, hard and long in a way that leaves you a little breathless; just a little.

Later, you think, is probably the best idea he’s ever had.

-

The first time you stargaze for real is also your last night of finals. If you were into metaphors at all, you might think it was poetic.

Then there’s the fact that you’re doing it with Ransom. Ransom, with whom your first date was in a planetarium of all things. That might be poetic, too, to another version of you.

As it is, it doesn’t feel like a literary statement to lie next to him in the tall grass, the coolness of the night air sharpening your hazy euphoria at finishing the very last exam of your undergraduate career into something breathlessly, incandescently happy, with the backs of your hands brushing against each other and the silence covering you like a well-worn blanket. It doesn’t feel like a literary statement to look over and see the pale light of the stars reflected in the darkness of his eyes, whole galaxies contained in his pupils. And it doesn’t feel like a literary statement when he reaches over and cups your jaw in his hand, and kisses you softly under the myriad constellations.

It’s not poetry, these moments between you, the world at your bidding and the future tantalizingly, thrillingly reachable before you. It’s not poetry; it just is.

-

The act of graduating is not so important, it turns out, as everything that happens after.

Ransom comes and finds you as soon as they release everyone, body crashing into you and arms tightening around your waist. You find Lardo and the rest of your boys and they join in the embrace too, laughing and crying and all the other things you do with other people when you graduate. There’s lots of pictures, too. Lots of thumbs ups and blindingly bright smiles.

It’s not long before all of you have to part ways, even you and Ransom. Your family’s already left for home, and you promised to visit them for a couple weeks before you move your shit to Boston. Ransom is driving home with his parents. This, surprisingly, doesn’t bother you. You will come back together eventually. That is as much an inevitability as anything.

You say your goodbyes with one more embrace, knowing it will be far from your last, and then he’s gone, and you ought to be on your way, too.

You get to your car, grin still lingering on your face, and get ready for the drive. You rummage through your bag for your iPod, and feel yourself slow to a stop when your hands brush across what feels like the hard plastic of a CD cover that had definitely not been there when you packed last night.

You tug the CD out. There’s a post-it note on the front. Your eyes catch on the large, capitalized words first –

**I WILL IMPLODE WITH YOU**

And then, in smaller writing below that –

_Please listen post-haste. Preferably as soon as you’re on the road. Also, you owe me ten bucks if you cry._

As soon as you start the car and pull onto the road, you put the CD in. You carefully listen to the first ten seconds of every song. Then, you take your phone, thumb Ransom’s icon under your speed dial, and put the phone on speaker (drive safely, kids). He picks up on the first ring.

“Do you mean to tell me,” you say, “that you gave me endless shit for being enough of a nerd to make you a mixtape, and then went ahead and _made me one in return_?”

“If music be the food of love,” he says flippantly, voice crackling over the receiver, “then play on.”

“You chirp me incessantly for making you the straightest playlist in existence, and then you have the audacity to gift me with a _Drake_ _song_.”

“Bro! I could not have done it without my boy Drake!”

“Justin.”

He laughs freely. “So I may have been a little unkind to the idea of a mixtape.”

“A _little_. That thing is my magnum fucking opus, Rans. Don’t even give me that.”

“But, you know, I think it’s grown on me. I mean, what better way to ruin every love song ever for you? I can’t listen to Beyonce anymore without being filled with crippling embarrassment on your behalf.”

“You mean crippling love,” you say. Your hands tighten around the wheel; you can’t stop smiling.

“Maybe I do, a little.” He laughs again, breathily. “I love you, dude.”

Something melts a little in your chest, like ice cream on a summer day. It’s a new feeling, hearing those words, but also it’s not, strangely. The two of you have been saying those words almost since the day you met.

“Yeah, man,” you say. “Love you, too. And thanks for the playlist. Although, ’I will implode with you’? Frankly, that sounds unhealthy. Considering, like, we’d die if that happened.”

“Bro. It’s _symbolic_.”

You snort, your chest all tight and buoyant simultaneously. “You are never allowed to chirp me for my playlist making skills ever again.”

“Okay, but from the trajectory of the moon and sun, and also considering you've only been driving for five fucking minutes, you haven't even listened to the whole thing. Like hell I’m letting you judge me now.”

“How would you know I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet? I cannot begin to tell you about all the opportunities I have had to listen to this dumb playlist.”

He pauses, just enough time, you suppose, for him to smirk. “You’re not crying.”

You groan. “How do you know that I’m going to cry? That’s so rude. Like, way to make assumptions.”

“Bro. I _know_.”

You roll your eyes. “All right, Professor Trelawney. I’m looking forward to collecting your ten bucks the next time I see your sorry ass.”

“Bro,” he says, “you’re on.”

(Forty minutes later, the interstate all but a monochrome blur outside your window, you call him back. You don’t say anything – can’t, really, through the force of your own tears, and honestly god _damn_ you for being so predictable – and he doesn’t either. But you can hear his smile anyway, can feel it in the silence and the space between your words, imprinted in your memories and on the walls of your heart.

There is literally nothing better on this god-given earth than being with him, you decide, except for that stupid smile.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -The song Holster serenades Ransom to sleep with happens to be "[Lucky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acvIVA9-FMQ)" by Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat. Told you I'm a huge sap.
> 
> -You are free to imagine whatever configuration of songs you'd like for the playlists, but [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/strange-towns/playlist/7qRP529psC4ufoDgp5eMN9) is a possible variation of Holster’s playlist to Ransom (Warning for: crippling secondhand embarrassment). And [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/strange-towns/playlist/4RPeNR0fYyzpRZgzVIZM9X) is a possible variation of Ransom's playlist to Holster.
> 
> -There are several ideas that did not make it into this fic, mostly because they pertained more to Ransom's side of the story. Rather than attempting to write a companion Ransom POV fic myself, because if I do it will basically be the same fic except with more bad bi puns, I have asked (read: begged) the incomparable [Lydia](http://boxesfullofthoughts.tumblr.com/) to write it in my stead, and she said yes! She doesn’t know if/when this fic will make an appearance for sure, but it is in the works. For now, though, I am truly done with this verse. Like, for real this time. Promise.
> 
> -Thank you again to everyone who helped me with this endeavor, and to everyone who's stuck with this fic until the end. I appreciate it more than I could ever say. 
> 
> And that's all for now. Cheers.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [to be coming home again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11027700) by [cynical_optimist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynical_optimist/pseuds/cynical_optimist)




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